“Windows 8 is coming” ad passes 1 million views, but is that good enough? - PC Pro (blog)

"A million video views!" Say it like Dr Evil and that sounds like quite a lot of eyeballs, but I wonder whether it qualifies for success in Microsoft's world. After all, it's placed a lot of money behind the "Windows 8 is coming" advert, especially in the US, and the dollars-to-recognition ratio can't be too pretty.

Now it's a perfectly good advert; the trouble is that there's nothing in it to excite the average person. Windows 8 is coming? So what? I challenge you to watch the ad above and tell me.

Look at it like this: when Apple launched the iPhone 5, it also announced iOS 6. But the latter was a minor to the iPhone's major: consumers care about the hardware, stupid.

This isn't exclusive to Apple's marketing magic. I'm excited at the prospect of getting my hands on a Microsoft Surface tablet, and if it's as good as the rumours suggest (I hope to be writing a hands-on blog about the Surface later this week, live from the launch event in New York) then Microsoft could have something special on its hands.

In the meantime, I recommend you take a look at this rather more interesting YouTube ad: