Why the Sour Face Gerry?

Microsoft’s new $300 million campaign will be hard to miss. Don’t watch much TV, the ads will be on the net. You can catch them on web properties of MSN as well as YouTube.

The commercials star Gerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates. As such they are newsworthy and get far more exposure than Microsoft has paid for. So far so good, but what is the message, the positioning or even the emotion Microsoft is trying to convey?

As humor, the spot is uneven. Some the dialog such as the parking lot scene where Gerry gushes a bit too reverently about mind melding of Gates’ “Jupiter sized brain” goes nowhere. In contrast to his campaign for American Express, Seinfeld seems a bit out of form.

Microsoft has long been identified with Gates, but the commercials come just as he is leaving active management of the company. Possibly it is an attempt to humanize Microsoft, often referred to by competitors and customers alike as “the evil empire”. The richest man in America is just as cheap as the rest of us, who buy shoes at a mall outlet.

Are you felling better about the Microsoft brand already?