Microsoft reboots ad without Jerry Seinfeld

Microsoft Corp., the world's largest software maker, started a new phase of a $300 million (Dh1.1 billion) ad campaign without spokesman Jerry Seinfeld last week.

New commercials will feature celebrities such as actress Eva Longoria and rapper Pharrell Williams, spokesman Frank Shaw said.

The campaign, the company's biggest since its founding in 1975, will show the diversity of Windows users in commercials, challenging Apple's portrayal of Microsoft customers as unhip.

Print ads and television commercials with the tagline "Windows. Life without Walls" started running on Thursday, Microsoft Senior Vice-President Mich Mathews said in an interview.

The company plans to tout the global reach of the software and its more than one billion users.

Advertising agency Crispin, Porter and Bogusky developed the commercials for Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft, the world's largest software maker. They follow up on a series of ads that debuted on September 4 depicting quirky conversations between comedian Jerry Seinfeld and Gates.

The first spot showed Seinfeld and Gates shopping at a discount shoe store.

A second had Gates and Seinfeld trying to connect with average people by moving in with an American family. Neither commercial mentioned Microsoft's flagship Windows software.

More than five million internet users viewed the Seinfeld-Gates ads, Mathews said. They were only intended to run for two weeks to generate a buzz, and Microsoft does not currently plan to include Seinfeld in future ads, she said.

"Now you have more people than ever paying attention because their appetite has been whetted by this icebreaker," Mathews said.

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