Third, Never-Aired Seinfeld Ad for Microsoft Was Filmed?

Asher Moses, reporting for the Sydney Morning Herald:

Microsoft has already run two ad spots featuring Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld awkwardly meeting in a discount shoe shop and attempting to reconnect with real people by moving in with a normal family.

But even though a third ad featuring Seinfeld was filmed, Microsoft dumped the comic last week in favour of new ads featuring more current celebrities such as actress Eva Longoria, singer Pharrell Williams and even author Deepak Chopra declaring “I’m a PC”.

But all three are Mac fans, Silicon Valley gossip blog Valleywag revealed.

I don’t care about the fact that the ads themselves were produced on Macs. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find any major ad agency that doesn’t produce their creative work on Macs. Making fun of Microsoft for this would be like making fun of Apple because they use Windows PCs for things like SAP.

What’s interesting to me is the report of a third, never-aired Seinfeld spot. I heard the same thing last week, privately, from a friend in Seattle. But now here it is in print. If true, it’s proof that Microsoft’s claim that they’d only ever planned to run two Seinfeld ads and for just two weeks is, in fact, a crock.

★ Thursday, 25 September 2008