The Wow died yesterday

During Bill’s WinHEC 2007 keynote speech yesterday, Microsoft played a teaser video summarizing its entire launch efforts globally for Windows Vista and Office 2007. Normally, Microsoft produces these promotional videos with very high production value, for example the recent and notable oPhone parody, but what came out yesterday was the worst video mash-up I’ve ever seen. If you don’t have a headache, then you will after watching this video.

It felt like nothing on the screen could stay still for one second – always zooming in and out, shaking, flashing or flying away. And what about those featured quotes? “Microsoft is putting it’s money where it’s mouse is -USA Today“. “This is an excellent release of Windows -Houston Chronicle“. Are those the best quotes they could find about Vista? It feels like Microsoft didn’t put much effort into the WinHEC keynote at all.

However, the Windows Rally infomercial, Windows Home Server demo and Craig Mundie’s presentation made up for the lesser efforts.

23 insightful thoughts

  1. I was watching the show streaming live. I have to agree, I didn’t enjoy this video. The screaming “THE WOW STARTS NOW” voice was particularly nasty.

  2. It`s not about bad video, it`s about bad keynote. It was most boring Bill`s keynote I saw yet. Nothing really interesting, nothing really new. And nothing cool. I hope PDC 2007 will change this.

  3. I entirely agree.. I have rarely seen such a confusing video. Some of the images they had were really nice, but they just glossed over them and paused on the most boring ones.. Like Bill saying that this was the first time Windows had parental controls.. surely that isn’t the key feature they are proud of??? And I agree.. The Houston Chronicle? How much more obscure can you get.. think international Microsoft… think broader… I wish I worked at Microsoft Marketing πŸ™‚ Seems to me you would like it too Long!

  4. Yes it was very uninspiring. We shouldn’t compare this with Apple’s keynotes. πŸ˜‰

  5. @rieuwa:

    The video is crazy, but the Houston Chronicle isn’t bad. I read it every day, and I have to say that it’s one of the best newspapers in the country, for giving the most in-depth content that I can’t find in other papers. They do a pretty darn good job.

  6. Certainly an… interesting video. I didn’t see anything else of the presentation, so I have no idea what else happened.

    Interesting, though – there was a clip from Ten Late News and, I’m fairly sure, Seven News, as well. πŸ˜€ At least, for all the other screw-ups Microsoft Australia has delivered us, they haven’t forgotten that we do have media networks.

  7. This video was actually shown at the January 29th consumer launch event (when the kids on stage pressed the “WOW starts NOW” button which was just a Windows Vista orb on a touchscreen display)

  8. @Maurice: Although I think this video is slightly updated with new content as seen by flashes of pictures from the launch event itself.

  9. @ Michael. Is it? See the problem is that for anyone outside the States it means very little…

  10. Long, clearly you made this video yourself, because only someone trying to show what NOT to do in marketing would make this. Clearly it must have been made as a joke.

    I mean, Microsoft marketing would never be so stupid…

    I mean, Microsoft marketing has such a great track…

    I mean…

    Uh…

    I just can’t believe it. It sucks TOO much.

  11. They still cant match the early Longhorn videos shown at PDC 2003. I have to agree on everyone here on how badly produced it is. There were some nice graphics towards the end but obviously everyone in the audience must have very short attention span (ironically since this was shown in the middle of a keynote)

  12. @Long

    yeh but when u read the news (sorry that its german) it assumes, that this is a good sign that the technology “windows rally” will be included in the sp1.

  13. @Marco: Windows Rally is already supported in Windows Vista. I can only assume it is further developed in SP1, but that’s general progression.

  14. I wish the guitar ripping at the beginning would have been the Vista start up sound (or at least an option). Waking up in the morning to hard rock would have been kinda neat.

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