I'm a PC

Sean Siler, an actual Microsoft employee featured in the ad campaign

"I'm a PC" is the title for a television advertising campaign created for Microsoft by ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky (CPB). The series first began to appear in September, 2008. The new series of commercials replace those that featured the pairing of Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates.

The $300 million dollar advertising campaign was designed to challenge Apple's "Mac Vs. PC" campaign by showing everyday people to be PC users.

Campaign

"Meaghan" identifying himself as a PC user while underwater in a shark cage.

The ad series features prominent and popular individuals saying "I'm a PC" and has appearances by common international users as well as personalities such as medical doctor and writer Deepak Chopra, ultimate fighter Rashad Evans, actress Eva Longoria Parker, photographer Geoff Green and singer Pharrell Williams.

The campaign was created by the CPB advertising agency and exhibited normal PC users to be found everywhere. It was the second phase of Microsoft's 2008 efforts to displace the ubiquity of Apple's "Mac Vs. PC" ads, which portrayed the Mac as "cool and intuitive" and the PC as "boring and clunky". The Microsoft spots typically opened with an image of Sean Siler, a Microsoft employee claiming "I'm a PC, and I've been made into a stereotype".

The composition was made to be initially resemble that of the Apple campaign, as Siler bears a resemblance to John Hodgman, the "PC" counterpart to Justin Long as a Mac in the Apple commercials.

The advertisements are also interspersed with various non-famous users who proclaim "I'm a PC" from a variety of places and in a number of methods. The intent is to demonstrate how PC users are ordinary people, contrasting the "Mac Vs. PC" campaign's negative portrayal of Windows users.

Criticism

Criticism of the campaign, mostly found on Internet technology portals and blogs, focused around two allegations: that the commercials had been crafted, at least in part, using Apple hardware, and that the celebrities declaring "I'm a PC" were Apple users or advocates.

The link between the commercials and Apple machines was initially noted by a Flickr user, who found traces of Apple's operating system and Adobe's CS3 graphics program embedded within press-released images of the commercials. Computerworld magazine published similar findings, noting that when the file properties of those images (found on the Microsoft press site) are examined the designation "Adobe Photoshop CS3 Macintosh" can be seen. According to an InformationWeek blog, Microsoft responded overnight to the criticism by digitally scrubbing the Apple-related metadata from the images.

Further criticism notes the choice of spokespeople used in the "I'm a PC" campaign, as some of the celebrity's endorsing "PC" have been noted as an owner of the Apple Iphone (Williams), supportive of the Ipod (Chopra) or in the case of Longoria Parker, photographed carrying a Mac at an airport check-in counter..

In an official press release, Microsoft stated "As is common in almost all campaign workflow, agencies and production houses use a wide variety of software and hardware to create, edit and distribute content, including both Macs and PCs."

External links

• Microsoft's PressPass gallery, displaying the images
• Flickr page noting the Apple OS and Adobe CS3 metadata