What they shoulda done was — Microsoft edition.

You might have already caught the Microsoft spot directed by Bobcat Goldthwait involving the trifecta of breakfast, porn and vomit? (Freudian slips are showing as the husband doesn’t really seemed bothered by the wife’s projectilization. Much. Just what is he surfing for online anyway.)

But here’s one thing they coulda, woulda, shoulda done. How about a nice pre-rant to lead things off first though, hmmm? K!

I’m really fed up with the bullshit from major agencies giving shit to any blog that criticizes obviously bad work, as if ad bloggers don’t have a clue and that “consumers love the new work.” They do it all the time, especially at Cannes. (Spies. Everywhere.)

Their problem though is that they mistake the passion we have for doing good work with being angry in general. (The Unabomber was angry—I just love advertising. Know the difference.) Sometimes though, agency people let you know how cool they are and you aren’t with harsh comments on blogs–anonymous comments too!

Courageous in the pursuit of the Big Idea, just not in blog comments. Whatever.

By all means though, keep flooding our email with your agency’s endless PR stream and exactly that type of work. We appreciate the irony. We’re also fed up with bad work because we’re tired of watching agencies take millions for work that others, like us, could do better.

Sure, we all have to deal with client restraints and guidelines, who doesn’t, but that excuse only carries you so far. Sure looks like client wasn’t worried about guidelines in this case because you wonder how the hell this gets sold, then approved. (We cannes do better–write us a check and see.)*

There also seems to be no understanding that many ad blogs are written by creatives who have worked for some pretty major shops, won some awards, and that maybe we’re actually right some of the time. I said almost three years ago that Ricky Gervais’ David Brent MS reprise was the funniest thing they’d done to that point. After seeing what Bobcat did? It’s still hard to disagree with that.

I say that even after giving props to Dean Cain in the other spot playing a campy spokesperson type. Here though, he’s not the problem. Because if this is what the brand throws a ton of money at and calls creative, something’s truly wrong.

(Ironic, people give shit to Crispin for this and the recent BK 7” ad for being their work, yet they’re not. More irony: In both cases they now get to reap the negative impact of agencies trying to be Crispin-like in their executions. The difference is, Crispin knows when to mess with the line without going over.)

This also goes to something I believe even more than ever: Major brands are hurting their cause by splitting up so much of their work across multiple agencies. Apple does not have the fragmented messaging that Microsoft seems to. (Why would you not give the browser work to Crispin from the start so we can get some consistency?)

Short of that, give the promoting of the new Internet Explorer 8 to Gervais and crew and let them riff on it. Then tell me honestly it’d be worse than that puke spot, and I’ll write a positive review of Wendy’s waaaay better ads every day for a year. They would’ve given it a sharp, witty approach to a product that needed to be promoted in a less juvenile way. (The only thing I questioned originally is the need to promote the newest release of an existing browser when people are more concerned with Microsoft’s operating system issues.)

But what do I know, I’m just an ad blogger.

*This being the universal “We” so that when Pepsi does write me a check one day Imma share it with y’all.