Controlling your story

Microsoft has done away with the quirky ads fea­tur­ing Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates, prompt­ing sus­pi­cion that the nigh-nonsensical ad cam­paign was a flop. But Microsoft spokes­peo­ple told the Associated Press that it was always the plan to pull the ads at this time and replace them with ads that actu­ally have some­thing to do with Windows.

Brian Heater at PC Magazine, wrote that the orig­i­nal ad run, which was touted as a $300 mil­lion response to Apple’s “I’m a Mac” ads, left a lot of tech writ­ers baf­fled and angry:

When it finally aired, the spot, which found Bill Gates and the for­mer TV star shop­ping for shoes at the mall, wasn’t exactly a hit with the tech­no­rati. They were baf­fled. Baffled and angry. They won­dered what the thing had to do with Vista...and Apple...and, for that mat­ter, Microsoft. They won­dered why it wasn’t, you know, funny.

The new ad cam­paign, set to debut next week, will be themed “Windows. Life Without Walls” and will fea­ture ads with an assort­ment of Microsoft employ­ees and celebri­ties proudly declar­ing, “I am a PC.”

The New York Times reported on the mar­ket­ing side of the new ad cam­paign, quot­ing a Microsoft mar­ket­ing man­ager, David Webster, who told the news­pa­per, “They’ve made a car­i­ca­ture out of the PC,” which was unac­cept­able because “you always want to own your own story.”

Ah ha! There’s the nugget I’ve been wait­ing for. Of course, this is mar­ket­ing ter­mi­nol­ogy: “own­ing” your “story.” What it really means is hav­ing con­trol of how peo­ple think about you, and with Apple con­stantly telling peo­ple what a PC is in its com­mer­cials, Microsoft had lost con­trol of what it thinks is its brand — which for them means any com­puter that’s not a Mac. (Incidentally, I won­der if the world’s Linux users are happy with hav­ing Microsoft claim the PC brand. After all, a PC doesn’t have to be run­ning Windows.)

Anyway, about the nugget: This reminds me of things I read about dur­ing all that time spent study­ing lit­er­a­ture and lit­er­ary the­ory in col­lege. We often talked about minor­ity cul­tures and minor­ity lit­er­a­tures — fem­i­nist and post-colonial the­ory, as exam­ples. The idea was that, because these peo­ples or social groups could/did not com­mu­ni­cate in the same chan­nels or lan­guages as the major­ity group, they lost con­trol of their sto­ries. Either that, or their sto­ries never got told in the first place.

Without a “story,” peo­ple don’t exist, not in any mean­ing­ful way, at least. Our sto­ries define who we are. Think about meet­ing some­one new or going out on a date. You want to learn about the other per­son. You want to learn their story.

We all have sto­ries. We all have nar­ra­tives that we tell to other peo­ple that we think will give them cer­tain impres­sions of us. We are all adver­tis­ing reps doing our best to rep­re­sent our­selves to our own advan­tages — putting just the right spin on bad events and empha­siz­ing the things we’re proud of. Doubt me? Think about how you spun that McDonald’s job on your resume and get back to me.

And what hap­pens when you lose con­trol of your story? Think about that rumor that once spread around high school about you. Tell me if you had con­trol of that par­tic­u­lar story and how you felt like it defined you.

Stories are impor­tant, and the New York Times reminded me of that again today. It reminded me that at heart, we are all just try­ing to tell the best story we can about our­selves on any given day; objec­tive truth is a myth and always has been.

Related posts:

1. A story rec­om­men­da­tion from Julie
2. Story-streaming
3. Microsoft and Yahoo may yet do business
4. Will your story abide video or audio?
5. Ethical issue: Local paper edits online-published story with no notice of the edit UPDATED