CP+B Microsoft Strategy = Embracing the Awkward?

Ok - I'm sure I'm not the first one to come up with this theory....

But I am thinking Crispin Porter Bodusky's new Microsoft Strategy may actually be to be "un-cool"...and if it is, I think this is absolutely brilliant.

Ok so first off...

The Work (or clues):

1. Sienfeld+Gates advertising campaign: Paying (very publicly) huge amount of money on talent for a campaign that had a convoluted SMI and had the majority of the world scratching their heads (and critics salivating). Ads end up getting pulled after 2 TVCs, being replaced with a more predicatable "I am PC" spots.
   
2. T-Shirts...yes T-Shirts focusing on the utter "geekiness" of MS. I mean for what reason would Microsoft ever advertise DOS? Having worked a bit for them in a past life - the last thing you would ever promote is something that has anything to do with a command line to a non .NET/Vbasic/etc target.
3. Microsoft releases "Songsmith" video on their site and on YouTube (added Jan 8, 151k views/785 comments). Universally panned as "lame" "horrible" etc.... Yet amazingly, it still remains on the MS corporate site.

Conclusion/Theory
Ok, so here is my theory. CP+B knew trying to change MS's image to compete directly with Apple's was going to be a daunting task. Any campaign that attempted to shift MS's brand from the "evil empire" to cool, hip, etc would be viewed with skepticism and disdain by the general public. So what do you do?

You embrace the geek. You embrace not trying to be cooler than Apple, but being the awkwardly geeky brand and create a buzz around their core essence - they are technologists first, marketers second.

Ok, could be wrong. But remember this is coming from (arguably) the world's premier agency. Do we really think thy would make this many mis-steps for a single client? My guess is nope.

Some Related Links:
http://creativity-online.com/?action=news:article&newsId=133266&sectionName=special_report
http://community.research.microsoft.com/
http://adage.com/agencynews/article?article_id=133069

(Big ups @scottsinclair for sparking this train of thought)

Web 09 - Auckland

I am sure the hipster Aucklander set are already “in the know”, but just stumbled across this.

“WEB09 will bring people from around the world to Auckland for this premier event, with a focus on current and new trends in web design, technology and community.”

Speakers include Biz Stone from Twitter

Auckland Sky City
April 17-18, 2009

Microsoft Tag

MS announced the release of MS Tag, a QR competitor specific for mobile platforms.

Summary

• An interesting solution in that TAG codes are easily developed and baseline reporting can be tracked via MS’s site.
• Also, tags (appear) to be universal across platform types (Symbian, iPhone, Blackberry, etc).
• Readers already appear to be in market (at least for the iPhone which is the only platform that really matters...).
• From what I can tell, admin, readers, stats, etc are all free (at least during beta)

Relevent Links:

Intro overview (Check out the FAQ info specific to publishers)
Admin Site that allows you to create and manage Tags (currently in Beta)
iPhone Tag Reader
Other Mobile Readers

An Example:

1. Download the iPhone application from the link above
2. use it to take a pic of the following Tag I created that (should) take you to www.aimproximity.co.nz
3. Since they include baseline reporting within the admin - I’ll keep an eye out on usage stats.

UPDATE
Per comments below, here is a screenshot of the reporting function. As mentioned pretty baseline data at this point

kick start

ok - so have been predominately on Twitter and have left this thing to die....

But have decided that the character limits of Tweets require me to resurrect this ghost town.

Will use it to expand on Tweets when need be, but am not really going to be checking/responding to any comments unless with any frequency - so please DR @dlin if need be

"This town is a ghost town...bands won't play no more" - The Specials