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I'm a PC, and I'm Worried About My ImageMicrosoft's $300 million campaign to prove Windows isn't lame.

By Farhad ManjooPosted Monday, Sept. 29, 2008, at 4:08 PM ET

Microsoft's I'm a PC ad. Click image to expand.Bill Gates hates Apple's "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" ads. He argues that they exaggerate the difficulties of using Windows and, worse, that they're mean-spirited, maligning 90 percent of the computer-using public as "dullards" and "klutzes"—folks who don't belong at the cool table. "I don't know why [Apple is] acting like it's superior," he told Newsweek last year. "I don't even get it. What are they trying to say? Does honesty matter in these things—or if you're really cool, that means you get to be a lying person whenever you feel like it? There's not even the slightest shred of truth to it."

Gates stepped away from a day-to-day role at Microsoft this summer, but the company's much-discussed new $300 million marketing campaign follows his critique of the Apple ads. Its core message: Hey, Apple, who are you calling square? Each ad begins with a John Hodgman look-alike—played by Sean Siler, a Microsoft engineer—who declares, "I'm a PC, and I've been made into a stereotype." He's followed by an international army of Windows users who tell us what makes each of them so special: "I'm a PC, and I'm not what you'd call hip," says a black scientist with a British accent. There's a geneticist, a graffiti artist, a shark biologist, a jeans designer, a guy who turns cow manure into fuel, and an astronaut. Gates pops in to say, "I'm a PC, and I wear glasses." "I wear glasses," replies a school kid in Africa. The most memorable quip, perhaps unintentionally, comes from mind-body guru Deepak Chopra: "I am a PC and a human being. Not a human doing. Not a human thinking. A human being."

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I don't think that's meant to make you laugh. While the ads' tone is light, they're self-consciously self-serious. The people in these spots don't just use PCs, they are P.C.—in contrast to Apple's white-bread twosome, everything about them is politically, racially, environmentally, and ideologically correct. Where Apple once held up the great men and women of our age for their courage to "Think different," Microsoft seems to be saying that each of us is special in our own way—special enough that we don't need software to define us. It's the sort of message you rarely hear now that Stuart Smalley is off the air, and as a Windows user, I suppose I should be grateful for the affirmation. In reality, I'm slightly embarrassed by the suggestion that I should be doing something great with my machine. I'm a PC, and I spend my days looking for silly things online. Am I using the wrong computer?

Still, the new ads mark a clever marketing turn. Unlike Apple, Microsoft seldom traffics in cultural commentary. Many of its TV ads resemble spots for luxury cars—they feature lots of shots of businessmen getting things done and vague promises of future efficiencies. As a result, most are completely forgettable. There are only two Windows commercials I can call to mind: the launching spot for Windows 95, which was great mostly for its soundtrack (the Stones' "Start Me Up"), and the recent ill-advised "Mojave Experiment" campaign for Windows Vista, which sought to prove that people can be fooled into loving Microsoft's software.

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Farhad Manjoo is Slate's technology columnist and the author of True Enough: Learning To Live in a Post-Fact Society.
Photograph © 2008 Microsoft Corporation.
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