Microsoft has this week pulled another ad in what is an only slightly less high-profile incident than the controversial one which recently saw black faces deliberately removed (badly), with a quick photoshop job, from ad images for the Polish market. This time the ad is a web-based video one generally based around vomit, porn and Internet Explorer 8…
The ad relies on a quirky, internet-based humour feel – and is certainly not one that Microsoft would ever consider launching on prime time television for example. Instead it is clearly designed for a web-savvy young internet crowd (hence its online only distribution). It has now been taken down from the MS website, but is still, perhaps inevitably, now eternally available for all to see on Youtube.
I won’t spoil the ‘plot’ – i.e. the joke of the piece for you – so if you haven’t yet seen it, have a click over to watch it before continuing with this post (it might not make too much sense otherwise).
I would be curious to find out exactly where the complaints over the ad came from as, while certainly not exactly appetising to watch, I don’t find it that repulsive, or offensive enough to spur me to complain. Whatsmore, I’d consider myself certainly to be a member of the particular target audience of the ad – which leads me to consider, could it have been an issue of the ad being mis-delivered to the wrong audiences: i.e. ones for whom it would have a negative impact only?
This is the problem with being such a popular global brand which provides services to people of all ages, religions, professions etc – you have to tailor your advertising to each because a one-size-fits-all approach certainly won’t work. However, even if the ads in question are up to the task, there is great potential to mis-fire if the delivery is not adequately controlled. In short, try and do too much with an ad (i.e. reach too wide an audience) and things like this might happen…
Unlucky for Microsoft really because the ad is fairly effective at raising a smirk from anyone who’s familiar with basic concepts of browser history settings and web chat abbreviations such as omgigp (’oh my god i’m gonna puke’)…
If this isn’t you and you’re nonetheless watching the ad – fair play: see what you think. But if you find it highly offensive or repulsive, it’s probably the case the MS never intended for you to see the ad – but has slipped up somewhere along the line with its delivery. Either way, the final point i want to make it that, yes indeed – that is Dean Cain (of TV superman fame) who randomly enters the ad about half way through, quite the blast from the past…
Dejan Levi