Ballmer narrates new Microsoft ad

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Not as crazy as the first ad Ballmer did.

[Via Engadget]



  • JS

    Lame

  • http://twitter.com/leicaman leicaman

    Play up your strengths. So why’d they pick someone with such low credibility? That’s like getting Forstall to do an ad last week.

    • lucascott

      You mean this week. Last week he still had credibility because it hadn’t leaked out that he was being shit canned.

      Well some credibility. After all the bugs I’ve seen since I updated my iphone 4s, I have had no love for Forstall and his team’s work. In my opinion he didn’t just drop the ball he blew it up

  • http://peterscott.ws/ Peter Scott

    Not a Nokia Lumia 920?

  • Chuck

    It seems like Ballmer is a sleazy/shouty salesman at heart sorta like Herb Tarlek. The kinda guy who thinks he can talk his way into Loni Anderson’s panties tonight and move a million widgets tomorrow just by smooth-talking and flat out yelling, respectively(or vice versa).

    Not sure why they’re trying to make him seem sane when he clearly is not.

    Dude, let your freak flag fly.

  • G

    Aside from the extremely amateur audio mix (is this a real ad?), I don’t get the punch line: “But there’s one piece of advice I’d give to everyone. That’s me. And this is my Windows Phone.” What?

    • http://www.aichon.com/ Brad

      I think he was referring to the “Windows Phone 8 is gorgeous, check it out.” quote of his that he had on screen at the time. It definitely wasn’t as clear as it could have been.

  • http://www.aichon.com/ Brad

    There’s a reason you hire professionals to do stuff like this. Steve’s voice just kinda grates on you, to be honest. This reeks of a CEO being surrounded by yes men too afraid to tell him when something just is a lame idea.

    Of course, Jobs did his fair share of voice overs and other cheesy things (e.g. playing FDR in that Apple internal pep video or voicing over the Crazy Ones commercial), but his were at least well done.

    • jasper

      The apple pep video was internal, and Jobs did not voice the Crazy Ones ad. They tested it and went with the voice actor.

      The version with Steve’s voice on was pretty much dragged out of the cutting room floor as a might-have-been when it became so very apposite when he died.

      • http://www.aichon.com/ Brad

        Umm…I clearly said that the pep one was internal, so I’m not sure why you’re citing it as if you’re correcting me, and the Crazy Ones commercial with his narration was both floating around years before his death and was hardly something picked up off the cutting room floor, since it was very nearly the one they used.

        In fact, I remember reading that the only reason they eventually went with the Richard Dreyfuss version was because Jobs was concerned that people would interpret the commercial as an arrogant statement being made about himself if he was the one to narrate it. To combat that concern, they brought in Dreyfuss to narrate, but Dreyfuss was not the planned narrator from the start.

      • lucascott

        According to the rumors it was Job’s himself that wanted them to do a pro voice recording and made the call to use that and not his voice. Because he didn’t like the way he sounded in the end.

  • http://twitter.com/michaelq Michael Quinn

    $99 for Windows? Good deal.

  • Chris

    This spin is totally going to work in non English speaking counties.

  • http://twitter.com/OssoBuco Ralph Kruse

    Ballmer doing what he does best: being a salesman.

  • http://twitter.com/CoreyTamas Joel In Real Life

    Wow. I really thought that, by now, they would have seen that first commercial enough times to learn from their mistakes. Starting with the way he sounds when he talks and what he says when he talks.

  • lucascott

    His voice drives me nuts but I give them points because although they were in some ways just copying Apple’s ‘show them what it can do’ thing they did it in a semi fresh way. Wasn’t really 100% effective since some icons weren’t as clear what they were but assuming folks know or care who Ballmer is it could still work.

    Certainly it’s tops over Samsung’s “iSheep are stupid” style ads

  • http://twitter.com/Moeskido Moeskido

    As little as I respect Ballmer’s taste, that wasn’t an entirely terrible ad. It actually showed a tiny bit how you can use the product.

    The mistake was allowing him to think that any consumer would care for his advice.