In its long-running ad campaign featuring Justin Long as a Mac and John Hodgman as a PC, Apple has done a good job portraying Microsoft's Windows as the preferred operating system of stuffy, slightly clueless nerds. To judge from the ads, Mac is a skinny, slouchy hipster in an untucked shirt and Windows is a boxy, bulky salaryman in a cheap tie.
Mac hooks up with cute, shiny Japanese cameras and creates movies as flawless as Gisele Bündchen. PC awkwardly enjoys "slow jams" and earnestly sings the blues.
You get the idea.
According to Variety's Michael Schneider, Microsoft's marketing team may actually be comprised of stuffy, slightly clueless nerds, judging from their canceled sponsorship of Fox's Family Guy Presents: Seth and Alex's Almost Live Comedy Show in November. Apparently no one at Microsoft realized that Family Guy — which has been on and off the air since 1999 — might traffic in (gasp!) offensive humor.
Microsoft was set to use Windows 7 as the sponsor the show until, per Schneider, "Microsoft execs attended the special's taping October 16. The program included [show creator Seth] MacFarlane and Alex Borstein (the voice of Family Guy matriarch Lois) pitching Windows 7. For most of the special, however, MacFarlane and Borstein made typical Family Guy-style jokes, including riffs on deaf people, the Holocaust, feminine hygiene and incest. Such material was apparently a bit much for Microsoft."
Whether you find such humor actually funny is a matter of taste. (Family Guy's throw-everything-at-the-wall, plus a few Diff'rent Strokes jokes, approach to comedy has been thoroughly trashed by, among others, the creators of South Park in a two-part episode called Cartoon Wars, Part I and Cartoon Wars, Part II.) But it's kind of amazing that no one at Microsoft raised concerns internally before its sponsorship was agreed upon. Are they that out of the pop-culture loop?
Just look at the eight pages of "Offensive Quotes" found on the website Family Guy Quotes or this August 2009 article from the New York Daily News' Amy Eisinger. "The network known for politically incorrect cartoons and shows like More to Love has declined to air an episode of Family Guy that features a graphic depiction of an abortion," writes Eisinger.
Those links were gathered using Bing, Microsoft's own search engine. You're gonna tell me no one at Microsoft knows how to use Bing?
A company representative told Variety: "We initially chose to participate in the Seth and Alex variety show based on the audience composition and creative humor of Family Guy, but after reviewing an early version of the variety show, it became clear that the content was not a fit with the Windows brand. We continue to believe in the value of brand integrations and partnerships between brands, media companies, and talent."
Microsoft's outrage appears to extend only to the live show: Windows 7 still has a deal with the regular Family Guy broadcast as well as with other Fox shows.
So, really, the company took a very small stand — if it can even be called that — and earned itself a Google News page worth of negative press and a growing queue of mocking tweets on Twitter.
Gee, you can't buy bad publicity like that.
Matt Haber is the media blogger for Portfolio.com.See Also:
