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MS pays Seinfeld $10 million to plug Vista

There is much speculation as to exactly why Microsoft is handing $10 million to Jerry Seinfeld to star (and, we assume, help to punch up) a series of adverts designed to rekindle enthusiasm for the company’s Vista operating system.

From Jay Lyman, blogging for The451Group:

So can Jerry Seinfeld help Microsoft make Vista a little more fun and a little more popular? I’ve seen Mr. Seinfeld recently on late-night doing funny new material, but there is always that immediate flash back to Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer, a return to the 1990s when ‘Seinfeld’ the TV show ruled the ratings, a time when Windows was at perhaps the peak of its desktop dominance with Windows 95 and 98. That dominance carried through to Windows XP, largely unencumbered by competition from Apple’s Mac, Linux or anything else. However, we live in today, and I think Jerry Seinfeld harkens us back to different times (better times if you’re Microsoft). Now with Mac gaining more significant market share and Linux creeping into the desktop market with momentum in some segments such as netbooks, Microsoft lives in a different world. Maybe the company thought it could transport us back to the days of Windows 95 and Windows 98, but regardless of new software or new material, Seinfeld may just remind people of old times and the old Microsoft.

Seinfeld is an icon. Sure, his series may have ended in May of 1998, but it lives on in syndication (and subsequent generations of viewers don’t look at syndication as the content graveyard that previous generations did), and on DVD, making it much fresher and more relevant than expired series of the past may have appeared.

Since his show went off the air, he’s appeared on late-night talk shows doing new material, he’s gone on the road doing an entirely new set and turned that experience into what might be the greatest ever documentary on a performer (rivaling D. A. Pennebaker’s “Don’t Look Back?” Anyone? Comments?). And he’s produced a hit movie.

Microsoft and Seinfeld will counter the PC/Mac series from Apple. It oughta be interesting.