Wow

So AdAge has some coverage of the new multi-zillion dollar campaign to launch Microsoft Vista:

The spots picture "Wow"-murmuring moments such as a '60s-looking family staring at a black-and-white TV as a rocket blasts into space, a hippie climbing up on scaffolding to look out over the Woodstock crowd, a young boy staring out his window at a early-morning snow-blanketed street, and a man putting down a chunk of rock on the table as those gathered watch the Berlin Wall being torn down on TV. The juxtaposition will provide surefire fodder for the blogosphere.

Basketball superstar LeBron James also lends his celebrity to the ads. In a vignette, he is playing with a group of kids when one breaks in front of him, zipping off and doing fancy dribbles down the court. Mr. James stares after him and says "Wow." At the end of every spot, a man opens his laptop in a darkened office while the voice-over intones, "Every so often you experience something so new, so delightfully unexpected, there's only one word for it."

Cue the Vista "Wow."

Raise your hand if you've ever written a spot with any of the aforementioned vignettes in them.

Raise your hand again if you looked at it 10 minutes later and said "this stuff is so cliché, we better come up with something else."

Tag line is nice though, especially the tonality of it.

What's odd though, is given that most people's reaction to Vista is going to be "here's a new operating system that I'm going to be forced to learn and use, whether I want to or not, and that probably isn't going to make any of my daily tasks any easier" the campaign direction seems quite counterintuitive.

I mean cod liver oil isn't something that makes you say "wow."

And putting LeBron James in the spot isn't going to make it go down any easier.