Jerry Seinfeld jumps ship to Microsoft

Jerry Seinfeld, star of the long-running US comedy show until its finale in 1998, has signed a $10m deal to help the beleaguered software giant Microsoft take on its rival Apple. Beginning in the autumn, the comic will be seen in a series of TV advertisements kidding around with the Microsoft founder Bill Gates, just one part of a $300m marketing blitz.
 
However, while he remains one of America’s most popular entertainers, opinion in the US is divided about whether even Seinfeld can halt the advance of Apple, whose Macintosh, iPod and iPhone brands have become bywords for cool. The perception of Microsoft as a fusty 'yesterday’s brand' has been highlighted by Apple’s highly successful 'I'm a Mac, I’m a PC' advertising campaign.
 
On top of that people are questioning whether Seinfeld is the most appropriate spokesperson for the Microsoft brand, given his past association with Apple. Eagle-eyed fans of the Seinfeld sitcom will remember Jerry having a series of Apple Macs, displayed prominently, throughout the show’s nine-year run. Furthermore, one of Apple’s best-known ads from the late 1990s ("Here’s to the crazy ones") used footage of a young Jerry Seinfeld, along with Alfred Hitchcock and Mahatma Gandhi, to illustrate the company’s “think different” philosophy.
 
Still, Microsoft's new ad agency, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, which recently helped Burger King shed its old image, believes that Seinfeld can help lift the company out of its trough. But the influential Silicon Valley blogger Henry Blodget, is not convinced. "Microsoft will never be cool in the same way that Apple is cool. Companies with 90 per cent market share are almost never cool. Sorry, but nine out of 10 kids in the class can’t be cool.
 
"The good news for Microsoft is that being cool has never been a part of its success formula. Microsoft's real problem, which has nothing to do with perception, is that its monopoly is eroding. Even Seinfeld won't be able to change that."
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