I think there’s a very good chance that we’re seeing the sort of marketing campaign that will be studied in universities for years to come. I’m not sure which w

I think there’s a very good chance that we’re seeing the sort of marketing campaign that will be studied in universities for years to come. I’m not sure which way it will go. It might be looked back upon as the spark that ignited a massive resurgence and a prime example of one of the all time great ad agencies at the peak of their game. Or it might go down as act of hubris on par with Gigli but with ten times the budget Matt, I think you may be onto something there. Things in front of us always seem bigger than they really are, but when they went from M$10 on Jerry Seinfeld to directly responding to the "I'm a PC" commercials, this went from being another M$300 ad spend to a very high stakes gamble. When they were doing the Seinfeld thing, it could have been a defensive move. They solidify their support with their core market, and Apple's ads solidify their support with Apple's core market. It stops and further switching, but creates a stable stalemate with Microsoft maintaining huge market share and continuing to farm its customers for upgrade revenue. But directly responding to the Apple ads changes things. Now it's a kind of winner-take-all strategy. If they succeed, they could reverse the trend and win customers and mind share back. But if they fail, they accelerate the defection and actually get their own customers talking about Apple's advertising! If Microsoft spends any serious money on this "I'm a PC" series, I don't see this ending in a stable stalemate. One or the other is going to win out. It "I'm a PC" flops, Microsoft looks very, very bad and validates Apple's advertising. Of course, if it succeeds it could undermine everything Apple has worked on and claw back their gains. So... I would have to say that before canning Jerry this was not going to be a B-School case study. But now that the #1 player with 90+% of the market is breaking all the rules by referencing a competitor's advertising... Yeah, I see this as a B-School case study no matter how it plays out.