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Fortis gaat zijn reclameslogan ‘Here today. Where tomorrow?’ afvoeren. Op het internet werd er al snel ‘Here today. Gone tomorrow.’ van gemaakt.

Toch zegt Fortis dat het niet de grappen zijn, die hen overstag deed gaan. “De huidige marktsituatie van Fortis is de reden om nog eens goed te kijken naar wat je wilt zeggen in reclameboodschappen.”

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Has the American presidential campaign gone to the dogs?

One could be forgiven for thinking so after seeing the latest issue of Nature magazine.

The world’s leading scientific journal has featured a powerful image of John McCain and Barack Obama on its front cover. The pair radiate statesmanlike-authority, the image is suitably sombre for the weighty interview inside.

Then, however, you see the back cover.

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“It just goes to show that editorial and advertising aren’t working in cahoots.”

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Flickr user LuisDS discovered metadata on the creative copy of the “stereotyped PC user” and other photos appearing on Microsoft’s “I’m a PC” website that reveal they were produced using Macs running Adobe Creative Suite 3.

Microsoft code monkeys scrubbed the identifying information from the website stills overnight.

Apart from the ha-ha-this-is-funny, here’s a question for you marketing people: how can you, as an advertising agency, be able to create compelling advertising for a product you yourself have rejected?

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Microsoft’s panicked reaction to these Seinfeld ads, yanking them from the air and severing ties with Seinfeld, isn’t because the ads were poorly received. And dropping these ads is a panicked reaction. Let’s not pretend it makes any sense that the Seinfeld spots were planned as a two-episode teaser all along. No one signs Jerry Seinfeld for $10 million in a much-heralded deal to make just two spots that only run for a grand total of two weeks. The most telling fact is that the firm that reached out to the media yesterday to explain that this sudden shift was supposedly the plan all along was not Crispin Porter, the advertising agency producing the campaign, but Waggener Edstrom, Microsoft’s PR firm. Advertising campaigns which are going according to plan do not need PR firms to assert such.

The reaction to the ads wasn’t bad, it was mixed (and/or baffled). But the spots were undeniably successful in one important regard: they were noticed and discussed. I suspect what sparked the panic is that the Seinfeld ads were too good, too accurate at capturing just what it is that Microsoft, as a company and brand, stands for: nothing.

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Remember those awful Microsoft ads with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates? Well, now you can forget them. Microsoft flacks are desperately dialing reporters to spin them about “phase two” of the ad campaign — a phase, due to be announced tomorrow, which will drop the aging comic altogether. Microsoft’s version of the story: Redmond had always planned to drop Seinfeld. The awkward reality: The ads only reminded us how out of touch with consumers Microsoft is — and that Bill Gates’s company has millions of dollars to waste on hiring a has-been funnyman to keep him company.

And if you think they’re in a mess, get this:

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One new Microsoft commercial even begins with a company engineer who resembles John Hodgman, the comedian portraying the loser PC character in the Apple campaign. “Hello, I’m a PC,” the engineer says, echoing Mr. Hodgman’s recurring line, “and I’ve been made into a stereotype.”

What I’ve learned on marketing is that this is basically an explicit admission that Microsoft is the second-place brand. You never compare yourself to your competitors this way if you want to present yourself as number one.

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As part of Windows Vista’s $300 million marketing rehab, Microsoft Corp. will hire an initial wave of 155 “Windows Gurus” to walk around Best Buy and Circuit City stores, answer customer questions and defend Vista’s reputation against skeptics.

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One way Windows Gurus will differ from Apple Geniuses is that they are not intended to be sources of free technical support for existing Vista users.

“The guru role is to help sell Windows-based PCs. It is not to be an alternative tech support channel for Microsoft, as this has no financial return beyond improved customer satisfaction,” Baker said.

So the solution to people disliking Vista is…. get more people pitching the product at them.

Right. That’ll work.

I don’t get it. At all. This is how they’re going to improve the Microsoft image and sell lots of Vista?

That totally makes me want to go buy a copy of Vista..

Seinfeld was reportedly paid $10 million for his work in this series of ads…

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The Mobile Marketing Association has published its guidelines for advertising pushed over Bluetooth connections, and considers anyone who hasn’t opted out to be fair game for spammers.

The guidelines are now available for public review until 26 September, and take a distinct step beyond the UK’s Direct Marketing Association (DMA) rules in that they consider any handset left in “discoverable” mode to be implicitly giving permission for pushed adverts - something the DMA explicitly rejects.

The document (pdf) has been produced by the “Proximity Committee”, a part of the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), and is mostly concerned with an explanation of what Bluetooth is and how it can effectively be used. It says that IMS Research reckons that in the US more than 60 per cent of handsets sport Bluetooth and 70 per cent in Europe, making it an attractive channel for pushed advertising.

Oh look, something useful that people use and enjoy, let’s fuck it and make it annoying….

The article mentions a website where “they’d love to hear your comments”, but I wouldn’t bother - there’s no point in trying to talk to spammers.

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Mobile phone carrier Orange Poland admitted today that it hired actors to stand in line for the country’s iPhone debut.

“It was a part of our marketing strategy, the concept was thought up at Orange Poland,” the company told the Associated Press. “The aim was to ‘warm up’ the atmosphere around the launch of the iPhone.”

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