Item in the Toronto Globe and Mail, August 22, 2008:
“Microsoft Corp. will try to transform its dry and humorless public image by employing the popularity and charisma of Jerry Seinfeld. The world’s biggest software company has signed the comedian to spearhead a major $300-million (U.S.) branding campaign that will be launched next month.”

As any Mac fan knows, Jerry’s desk on Seinfeld desk was a virtual gallery of Macs in the 90s. The show started with an original all-in-one Mac SE, and then featured numerous others as the show gained steam. I can’t believe I was the only one who noticed.

But when the recent announcement came that the comedian would become a Microsoft pitchman, in addition to his other duties for American Express, no one in the media seemed to realize the delicious irony. I emailed Simon Avery the author of the Globe and Mail’s otherwise excellent piece and asked if he was aware of the Mac’s role in Seinfeld? “I was looking for just such a reference yesterday afternoon!” I urged him to call PR Writer next time.

A Google search of other stores turned up the remarkable circumstance that only The Washington Post picked up the amusing nature of the announcement:

“Apple’s ad campaign “Get a Mac” pits a coat-and-tie clad older guy (John Hodgman) representing a PC, against jeans and T-shirt-wearing Justin Long, who plays the Mac. The commercials have also poked fun at Vista.
Steinberg said this latest campaign by Microsoft shows that the rivalry between the software company and Apple is reaching the intensity of Coke and Pepsi’s cola wars of years ago.
It’s also possible Seinfeld seems more like a Mac guy, Steinberg said.
After all, it’s a Macintosh that’s seen in the background of his apartment on ‘Seinfeld.’”

My brother Jesse Rotman of the Rooster Group is apparently a better Googler than I, as he found the following other reference in PC News:

“One sidelight to all this has been the buzz that Seinfeld used a Mac on his old sitcom. ‘Used’ is a generous term. I don’t think I ever saw him—or any character—sit in front of the Mac SE-class system and type a thing. Even if he did, how is that relevant to computing in 2008? It’s not.”
So how come only The Washington Post and PC News got the reference? And why didn’t the Microsoft story even mention it, to head off a possible slagging somewhere in the media. Is it that we are so commercialized that Jerry doing yet another endorsement to increase his fortune even more isn’t news? And why wasn’t it one of the story’s key messages?

This story is somewhat like the movie Goodbye, Lenin where a family tries to convince their dying mother that all of the BMWs appearing in East Berlin were as a result of socialism’s victory. Here someone goes from Mac to Windows, a similarly unlikely occurrence if you’ve been watching the young people clamor for Macs, now that they have used iPods and know Jobs scored again with the iPhone.

And why didn’t Jerry ever use his Mac? Every other part of his apartment became a scene of action, from the bathroom to the kitchen. Maybe he was like McCain and didn’t know how to use a computer. If he did, then he wouldn’t have lost his joke on that episode where the piece of paper with the idea on it was thrown away in Los Angeles.

All in all, somebody other than me, the Post and PC Mag should have noticed it—certainly the AP Tech writer originating from Seattle. At least someone should have asked the question whether Jerry was a Mac or PC user: if you look at the commercial, you know the answer. Here’s the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxOIebkmrqs

Tags: Jerry Seinfeld, Mac vs. PC, PR