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Are you following the Microsoft "marketing rehab" saga these days? The biggest company in IT is feeling blue over its sinking reputation (give Vista a big hand, everyone!), and over those recent sand-kicked-in-face encounters with competitors like Apple. In response, MS is undertaking a $300 million "makeover" to remind the world that it's still relevant, hip, and the software vendor of choice for a billion Earthlings.

Fair enough. The campaign price tag raises 300 million eyebrows, but MS is good for it – 300 mil is like a comic book and a Mountain Dew to them. So a pricey "marketing rehab" sounds fine. But here's what's keeping those millions of eyebrows at half-staff: the fruit of the campaign is... all over the place. It starts with a "taste test" trial... then samples some stop-and-go advertisement ideas... veers off into a risky swipe at a competitor's ads... It's a scattershot bricolage of unconnected messages, short-lived initiatives, and a few embarrasing fumbles. It's a little bit of everything (save a plan).

Let's take a look at the loose confederation of experiments that make up Microsoft Rehab 2008:

1. The Mojave experiment

The Mojave Experiment was Microsoft's demonstration that Vista is hampered by the unfair perception that it's a bad product. The trial purported to give people a real taste of Vista without a mouthful of pre-conceptions, by having them try and rate a mysterious "new OS" (Vista in disguise). As MS reports, participants initially gave Vista an average rating of 4.4 out of 10, but upon encountering "Mojave" (Surprise! It's Vista!) gave that OS an 8.5. Much better!

There was just one problem: the participants didn't really get to test Vista. Each only got to poke around for a few minutes under the watchful hand-holding of the test guide. There was no opportunity to experience Vista's infamous setup difficulties, missing drivers, hardware incompatibilities, activitation pains, and so on – the things that people actually hate about Vista when attempting to use it for real.

Not surprisingly, the opining public wasn't fooled, and added yet more nasty words to Vista's thick file. The most common charge was that Mojave comes across as Microsoft complaining, "Nothing's wrong with our product; it's the customer that's wrong". And that's not a message to inspire hugs.

So while the Mojave Experiment was an interesting idea, it's not going to go down in consumer taste-test fame along the storied likes of Folger's Crystals. Or even Palmolive dishwashing detergent. ("You're soaking in it", indeed.)

2. The Seinfeld experiment

Take well-known MS founder Bill Gates. Pair with mega-successful comedian Jerry Seinfeld. Result: MS becomes fresh, funny, and flava-ful.

That was the apparent plan, anyway. Two TV ads positioned the unlikely comedy pair as just a couple of normal-Joe buddies. The first installment has them shopping for shoes; the second, living in a home to "connect with real people". Neither hawks a specific product (though MS can't resist self-congratulatory plugs like "Bill, you've connected over a billion people").

Here are the ads:

While reactions varied widely, many watchers did find the ads likeable and amusing, if not big-guffaw funny. Gates is no comedian, but he put in a game performance. As for Seinfeld, he – well, did Seinfeld, which a decade of sitcom watchers (including me) found pretty hilarious.

Still, something seemed amiss. Not a single observer failed to note that Seinfeld's time atop comedy's peak ended with his show 10 years ago, making him an odd choice for a "young and in-touch" message; younger targets of the ads won't have much nostalgia for or even familiarity with Jerry. And while the world liked Jerry's show "about nothing", that seems a less popular theme for commercials; "It's not about anything!" was a repeated complaint among viewers. 

Generous pundits were willing to wait and see how the ads played out; they were clearly teasers for more focused messages to come later. With Seinfeld taking in a widely-reported $10 million for his work on the ads, people assumed there were many more installments in the pipeline. But the experiment ended abruptly in mid-September. Microsoft's PR firm Waggener Edstrom announced the cancellation – and in the true spirit of public relations, called the sudden halt all part of a master plan. Kind of. Said the firm, "People would have been happier if everyone loved the ads, but this was not unexpected."

An MS spokesman played the same spin: "All along we said we were having a teaser campaign. We're getting ready to start the second phase. This was the plan all along." Really? Bloggers smirked at that explanation after learning that there is indeed a third Gates and Seinfield ad completed, but not scheduled to air. (Surely that couldn't have been part of the plan!) The snickers kept on coming, with the observations that the ads' creators, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, had earlier been profiled by Apple Canada for their enthusiastic praise for Macs, while Seinfeld himself was earlier a star of Apple's Think Different campaign. 

So that was that; the Seinfeld experiment is done. (As far as we know.) A lot of observers are saying that the head-scratching ads and sudden cancellation did MS more harm than good. Looking at the second ad in which the buddies clash with a "real family", a Slashdot entry put a snarky spin on it all:

"Although the ad does not mention Microsoft's operating system directly, it does mirror the real world experience of the company's products — appearing where not wanted, hard to remove, causing administration headaches, and finally being forced out in hopes of getting one's living space back."

3. The Windows Guru experiment

Even tossing $10 million at a comedian leaves a lot left over in a $300 million purse. Here's the next item on the marketing rehab shopping list: a cadre of 155 "Windows Gurus" to haunt Circuit City and Best Buy stores in search of Vista buyers. The Gurus will answer questions, run workshops, and "innovate, educate, [and] inspire". 

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Yes, that sounds like yet another wholesale nabbing of an Apple initiative: the Apple Stores' Geniuses. It's not a complete copy, however. The key difference: Apple's Geniuses field pretty much any question, including technical support. The Microsoft Gurus are there to push product as presales reps, a conventional strategy in retail. (They won't do tech support; if they did, says one analyst, they'd "become lightning rods for customers' frustrations with Vista.")

In other words, if you wanted to take a dim view of the MS initative, it'd run like this: the Apple Geniuses are there to help you; the Microsoft Gurus will be there to help Microsoft.

But come on, let's be positive and give the initiative a chance. MS certainly can't hurt itself by having enthusiastic employees on the retail floor. Er, then again... it appears that the Gurus will be enthusiastic (?) non-employees, contractors hired through a vendor support agency. Another analyst was unable to find much enthusiasm for the rent-a-Gurus:

"Apple has created an exemplary model for customer service and support. Because of its partners and how their interests converge and diverge, Microsoft won't be able to replicate the full experience."

Well, full experience or not, I'm actually curious as to whether the Gurus might have some effect on raising Vista's fortunes. We'll see!

4. The "I'm a PC" experiment

Seinfeld may be kicking back with a bank account $10 million fatter (and a calendar freer than he expected), but the MS ad team isn't resting. Once again, it's all Redmond eyes on Apple, with a new series of ads that finally returns fire at the foe's successful "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" ads. 

The new "I'm a PC" ads show a lookalike of Apple's PC character complaining that he's been stereotyped, followed by a colorful, non-stereotypical barrage of "regular people" proudly proclaiming "I'm a PC".

Okay, so what's wrong with that? Well, there's nothing overtly "Ohmygawd what are they thinking?" wrong. But by MS's own admission, the campaign is all about addressing Apple. A Vista marketing VP told the Worldwide Partner Conference,

"We’ve got a pretty noisy competitor out there. You know it. I know it. It’s caused some impact. We’re going to start countering it. They tell us it’s the iWay or the highway. We think that’s a sad message."

All right, but is it good to focus people's attention on a competitor's ad campaign? Similarly, is it smart to play into Apple's strategy of contrasting the Mac not to Windows but to the PC? After all, the PC is a device that, as the world is increasingly finding out, runs nicely (and more cheaply) on Linux; no Windows necessary. Thanks to Vista, hardware makers are working ever harder to ship PCs without Windows; the "I'm a PC" tag line helps them as much as it helps vendors who do stick with Vista.

Those are sobering questions for the strategists to ponder. For those who just want some quick laughs, Microsoft unwittingly stepped up to bat. Shortly after the campaign begain, blogging heads discovered and gleefully reported that the "I'm a PC" ads were made with Macs. Oh, the burn.

5. The "Life Without Walls" experiment

This one's not entirely standalone; "Life Without Walls" as a tag line comes at the end of the (Mac-made) "I'm a PC" ads, as well as appearing in media on its own. 

Life Without Walls. Sounds kind of nice, all open and airy and full of view. Yet as with every rehab initiative so far, Microsoft blunders into walls. In this case, a company called G.ho.st (which I'll call Ghost, because the periods are pretentious) says it already has a pending patent on the "no walls" tagline, and is demanding that MS come up with something new.

If the tagline copies from Ghost, the main ad copy copies – you guessed it – Apple. All touchy and feely, it's a pretty blatant attempt to create a "Think Different" spiel of MS's own. 

Moreso, the ads almost beg for put-downs. It's just too easy, as wags everywhere are demonstrating: "No walls? Well without walls, we don't need Windows!" Further, the image in the ad doesn't really support the tag line (it suggests life with walls and windows), and also invites yuks, such as the observation that the ad's Windows-shaped window is a proprietary design that wouldn't work in real life. 

The meta-experiment: "Try something! Anything!"

Windows Mobile is sinking while its next version, MS's antidote to the iPhone surge and Android buzz, is hit by delays. The Zune is going nowhere. (Joking about "killer iPhones", Stephen Colbert quipped, "I knew I should have gotten a Zune. They can't kill me, or do anything else.") Vista is still reviled and largely unused. (A recent Maximum PC article gave a MS representative full rein to explain away the Vista fiasco and present the company's reassurances that the OS is now ready to be loved – yet the exculpatory write-up still had to conclude, "...should you go out and buy Vista today? Probably not.")

A common view of Microsoft is that what was once the dominant force in IT business strategy (if never innovation) is now a mediocre mire of muddling middle managers. (My favorite comment, from sources unknown: "Microsoft? Yawn. They're not even good at evil any more.") Concerned parties charge that a mess of uncoordinated, short-lived ad campaigns won't fix MS's problems. Their advice, and mine:

Forget the "marketing rehab", MS, and bank the $300 million. Fix the products instead, and your image will take care of itself!