You’re likely familiar with Microsoft’s terminally cute Windows 7 commercial featuring 4.5-year-old Kylie (see earlier post). However, an entirely different Windows 7 campaign is being held in a secret location: the Windows Videos page at YouTube. (You actually need to drill down to find the little fellas. One example is above.) It seems that Microsoft/Crispin went through all the work to conceive and produce a new crop of spots, then shuffled them off to the side while Kylie works her “magic” in prime time.
Until we get a witness under oath, we can only speculate what the plan is. I will note that some companies make a rule of producing more commercials than they end up running (much to the glee of my freelance producer friends). Intel, for example, used to take two campaigns to full finish, investing over a million bucks in a campaign that would never run. They needed to have a “backup campaign,” just in case the favorite didn’t fare well in testing. (A quick review of Intel’s last decade of creative will show you how well that worked.)
Maybe that’s the strategy here, with the added benefit that in this content-starved world, there’s no need to shelve unused ads. They can be repurposed in Microsoft’s YouTube showcase of imagination — which then, in effect, becomes sort of a home for retired creativity.
Mystery aside, are these spots any good? There’s a range of work here, most of it comfortably in the “okay” range. Some of them actually make an attempt to promote a Windows 7 feature, instead of just trying to make us feel good about Microsoft. Others, well … they just try to make us feel good about Microsoft. But at least they’re contemporary, and they don’t cynically use young children to score easy points with mainstream America. They’re not awful — but I wouldn’t start packing my bags for Cannes just yet.
