Viral Video Roadkill: MS Windows Certified

windowsvista.jpgSorry, Microsoft Windows Vista. You’ve created roadkill. So horrible we have to stare.

I hereby nominate your ProductsofChampions.com into the WillVideoforFood Viral Video Hall of Shame. This “viral video” site — which features an annoying George-Bush style football coach — is wrong for so, so many reasons. I would pay money to hear the agency and the brand collaborating around this hopeless concept.  Let me start the list of what’s wrong with this, and I’m going to stop when I get too bored or annoyed to look further:

  1. What’s the point? I don’t know what I’m supposed to think or do.
  2. The coach just isn’t funny. The humor is soggy.
  3. The homepage rotates the coach’s annoying quips without giving the viewer an easy chance to muzzle him (unless they notice a tiny mute in the corner).
  4. There’s no way to move into a purchase, enrollment, inquiry. It’s just a big, fat brochure.
  5. The site is riddled with “flashterbation.” Pointless indulgence of flash.
  6. The videos are awkwardly devoid of purpose or entertainment.

This is a page out of the “Intel Inside” marketing play book, but it fumbles. Someone forgot to ask the basic questions. What information need are we solving? What do we want the visitor to do or believe? How can we engage them?

10 thoughts on “Viral Video Roadkill: MS Windows Certified”

  1. maybe you need vista to see all the cool 3-d graphics that are missing on every other OS? I have to agree, it’s pretty stupid. MS has enough money to buy some funny. Didn’t they test market this before release, or are we it?

  2. I got bored before the first clip was through playing. I really don’t know what they were trying to accomplish here by pointing people right to the videos. I would have spun them off as some sideline talk or something else other than the “main attraction”. Anyway, as you stated the site is pretty bad.

    I’m a new Nalts fan BTW. I just found you on YouTube and subscribed to your channel. Love the videos!

  3. Maybe they’re marketing to twelve year old, back room shareware creators and hardware hackers with an interest in sports and a burning desire to spit ball their coaches right in the middle of the fore head?

    Their whole site would be more effective if they reduced it to a one page, dot pointed fact sheet. At least then people would see all they need to know before leaving.

  4. Be careful what you write about Vista.! Your children and their children’s children might be black listed by MS and blocked from ever sucessfully hooking up their printer and PC..!

  5. How’d you like to be the poor MS Vista agency guy that is collecting feedback from the blogosphere to show the client how well this campaign was received? Do you pretend you never stumbled into this thread?

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