The much balyhooed, new  Microsoft/Seinfeld/Gates ad  is ‘out’… lots of buzz on this little puppy today in cyberspace.   Some strange stuff here from the shower shot with the boots, to Gates as a longtime member of the circus clown club, to computers being “moist and chewy like cake,” to the butt wiggle?

It’s a mystery to me where all this is heading, but perhaps it will make itself clear as the campaign unfolds in the weeks ahead.  Perhaps it’s just a commercial that’s all about nothing which was what Seinfeld was all about?  The ad is created by Crispin, Porter Bogusky, the agency that created the Burger King subservient chicken campaign – fun but extremely odd.  The 90 second spot looks like a hook to the get you sucked into future ads, the weirdness and humor meant to make you buy into an evolving story… but like much branded entertainment, there’s barely a product mention save the chewy computer of the future, whatever that means.  I am not convinced that Microsoft can truly get away with saying it’s cool when Gates has the super nerd rep. No doubt he’s a great guy, but his rep is his rep.

Maybe it will all make sense down the road — part of some kind of some Twin Peaks-like cathartic convergence, or maybe not.  Could it be that Microsoft is just trying to position itself as being cool and hip too?  Microsoft is e a little behind the times if they are trying to use Jerry Seinfeld to say “I’m cool too”…. as great as Jerry is, he’s not particularly au courant.   We’ll be watching the follow-on ads to see where this takes us.