If you haven’t witnessed the torture that is ‘Microsoft Songsmith’ then lucky for you, but if you would like to punish yourself watch it here.
Up to speed now?
Seen the Dad sing about glow-in-the-dark towels, heard the daughter sing like a banshee and watched the guy ‘sing that tune that will impress his band mates?’. Its by far the worst (greatest) bit of advertising Microsoft have ever done. We can all agree it is cheesy, but the cheese factor is what makes this work. A product like this is aimed at the tween market, the kids that want to be like their older siblings and friends. While everybody is off playing Singstar to songs they know, this younger market who doesn’t know the lyrics to “Mr. Mister - “Broken Wings” are able to make up a song and have a beat created for them. It is just like the ‘old days’ and hitting ‘Samba’ or ‘Rock’ on your preset controls on your Casio keyboard.
Where this ad works for Microsoft is that it has now become the latest internet ‘fad‘, because its advertising is so incredibly funny. Youtube members and bloggers around the world are forwarding the link, and from this it is gaining so much exposure. More than any ‘traditional’ media spots could ever get. All it will take is to be sent to somebody who has a son or daughter that would actually benefit from such a product, and they’ve got a sale. If this was a straight forward ‘This is how you use Songsmith’ type advert, it wouldn’t have same effect at all. The cheese factor is strong here.
Microsoft have always created what would be deemed as ‘cheesy’ advertising. From the early days, right up to the Jerry Seinfeld failure of advertising. While their number one competitor, Apple, were all about the stylized ’integrate with your life adverts’, Microsoft went for the ‘used car salesmen‘ approach. Yet somehow, it worked … and well.
So now with the latest Songsmith advert doing the rounds, there is a new sub-pop-culture phenomenon happening with Songsmith Remixes. This is just adding fuel to the fire for Microsoft, this is spreading the net (pain) even wider. With the premise behind Songsmith being: ‘Sing a song, we’ll add the music’, close clever boffin’s out there are taking the vocal tracks from well known songs and putting them into Songsmith. Sometimes with horrendous results. Take for example the mid 90′s classic acoustic Brit pop anthem, Wonderwall by Oasis. Put this into Songsmith with Liam’s phrasing and lyrics the song becomes a early 90′s techno dance anthem, which could have happened if Oasis didn’t find the Beatles and were inspired by Gary Numan instead.
So Microsoft, even though I despise you for selling the world an inferior, bug ridden, flakey (and cheap) operating system for all these years. I applaud you for this wonderful approach to advertising, but one question still remains. Where can I get these glow-in-the-dark towels, and how much?
