Last night while watching a rerun of The Mentalist, a commercial for the upcoming Microsoft Surface tablet came on. Clearly the focus is on the design, and in particular the magnetic click-on keyboard/cover, as well as the integrated ‘kickstand’. In fact, that is pretty much ALL you see in the video other than a few touch-gestures to make it clear this is a tablet device, and someone tapping to start a video and to end the commercial. Oh, and a user interface paradigm NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT (i.e. Windows 8, only tech folks have a clue about it yet).
For me it is somewhat reminiscent of the iPod ‘Bounce’ commercial … but instead of an established market-leading product, we have an unidentified product doing something that reminds me of taking a Smart Cover on and off over and over again as if THAT is some sort of ‘feature’. No features, no specs, no actual use, no pricing … nothing.
UPDATE: After I wrote this Microsoft announced pricing – $499 for 32GB base unit without keyboard, $599 for 32GB WITH keyboard, and $699 for 64GB with keyboard, all WiFi based. My initial reaction is that pricing isn’t so high as to be a non-starter, but it is high enough to kill ‘impulse buys’. For me that means Microsoft needs to do better than ‘iPod Commercials’ to get traction.
It reminds me of the first commercials for, I think it was Infinity. If you remember them, there were just showed the ocean and crashing waves and so on; nothing about the car at all. (As Dave Barry wrote, “What was it? A submarine car?”)
Sometimes I think these ad people get too clever for their own good. But I have noticed that Microsoft commercials are kinda, well, lame. There’s another one that I’ve seen online quite a few times for Microsoft networks; it just makes my eyes roll.
I’m not sure it’s that effective, but might be a good first ad for a campaign that will have more showing what the device actually does.
However, I am afraid for Microsoft that most people watching that ad will think that it’s an ad for a cool new keyboard cover for Apple’s iPad.