Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 “Really” ad might make Don Draper, the fictional advertising genius of Mad Men, gag but a sampling of opinion from the Web on the pitch is mixed.
In case you haven’t seen it, here’s what everyone is talking about.
“My first impression was ‘fantastic, finally an ad Microsoft should be proud of.’ ” writes “Zee” at The Next Web.
Zee likes the way the ad leads into its catch phrase, It’s time for a phone to save us from our phones. “[N]ever before have I heard a more timely phrase,” he declares.
“Boris” disagrees with Zee. “The reason I don’t like it is because I’m utterly confused by it,” he counters.
“What exactly is the message here?” he asks. “That all the other phones out there are so immensely cool we would even fish them out of a puddle of piss? So great that they lets us share every great moment in our lives, and that yes, sometimes we become so absorbed with our screens that we overlook what is happening around us? Well yeah, our phones are THAT cool.”
“PatrickJ” at Just Another iPhone Blog liked the new ad despite himself. “I’ve done my fair share of laughing at Microsoft’s adverts for their mobile devices in the past–they’ve always struck me as beyond lame,” he confesses. “Today I just spotted an ad for the (just officially announced) Windows Phone–and I’m a little amazed to say it’s pretty good.”
“It still doesn’t tell us or show us anything at all about what the new line of phones can do, but at least it doesn’t look like you need 3D glasses and a lot of illegal substances to enjoy it (cough, Zune ads, cough),” he adds.
Like “Boris,” John Cook at TechFlash is baffled by the pitch. “Am I missing something here?” he asks. “I’ve watched it three times now, and still don’t think it resonates.
“We’ve actually been impressed with Microsoft’s ‘Laptop Hunters’ ad campaign–which appears to be making inroads against Apple–as well as some of the more recent Windows 7 ads,” he adds. “But this one is just downright strange.”
Christina Warren at Mashable Mobile gives Microsoft kudos for avoiding the “gee whiz” attitude found in the smartphone ads of some other companies. “[I]t’s refreshing to see a campaign that isn’t focused on keeping us sucked into the awesome and magic of the smartphone,” she writes.
“Rather than the phone being the center of your life, your life is the center of the phone,” she contends is the underlying message in the ad. “The phone is able to be there when it is needed, but it also lets you live your life and focus on actual connections in the meantime.
“The tone and the focus of the campaign is coming from a very different direction of Verizon’s ads for the Droid, the HTC ads or even from Apple’s vision of iUtopia,” she adds.