I want to buy chocolate eggs and plywood.

~ 

These are the worst ads ever made.

First, they're not for anything. When Chevron and ExxonMobile and Phillip Morris make "brand buff" ads, it's because their goods are fungible. And to combat public perception that they own doom fortresses and kill our children. Microsoft sells software. They sell software bundles and software support. They have fucking product. Microsoft is not a store you go into for social comfort. If you have a task, they need to advertise the product that meets this task. Which they at least hint at in their other, barely less stupid ads. 

I need a computer that is good at only one thing! I don't know why! 

Second, they're not hip. Fast-associating visuals with your text has been a language for decades. Music videos, modern art, bitchy game critics ... hell, a DJ booth with an LCD ... a fucking screen saver are canvasses to guide thought with associative imagery.

In all of these, the key is to be obvious. Surprisingly obvious. Combining the word "liberation" (a political context) with a picture of a rodent bursting fron the ground (a physical effort) rewards the viewer because it mirrors what her brain is doing. Fleshing out an idea by linking it to a specific, intimate image. Usually a memory. Or a response common enough to communicate a memory. 

Here. Like this.

Turning corporate babble, like "stay ahead of the dog pack", into a wave of water with dog mouths, to serve your already-strained surfing analogy, is the exact opposite thing. It's forcing unintuitive, overly-stylized thoughts on a brain that would never think them. It's like running up to a stranger and arguing that elephants are green. Or punching him in the mouth.

Surprising? Edgy? Maybe. But not welcome.

Last, these ads don't give the viewer anything to do. If I want to taste the rainbow, I know where I can buy Skittles. I know what they cost. I know which hole to put them in mostly. But when you're done hearing the stock phrases mouthed by the CEO pitchman and you've watched the last cherry bomb explode into a hat rack with pie charts instead of hats ... what the fuck do you do? Do you go behind the counter of the cake shop you own, call 1-800-Microsoft and request "technology"?

No. Because if your cake shop is still in business, you're not that much of an idiot.

You've done your own needs evaluations and don't wait around for other companies to invite you to do research on your own time to find out what the hell they do and whether it does anything for you. You're a little too busy to do providers' work for them at the behest of ugly matte paintings that yell at you while you're trying to watch The Daily Show.

Microsoft is spending a lot of money to make noise at us. I'm trying to figure out why.