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Internet Explorer viral video taps Microsoft’s funny bone

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IE8 Net History, the online video that Microsoft released alongside the launch of the newest version of Internet Explorer, is hip, sarcastic, slightly vulgar and funny -- a bouquet of qualities rarely associated with the software giant.

With a pastiche of interviews with recognizable faces, Net History provides a comedic overview of the history of mainstream Internet use. Janeane Garofalo, Dave Hill and the ninja from the Ask a Ninja podcast riff on topics from modems to Internet memes.

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The ad continues Microsoft’s recent tradition of hiring comedians to hawk its software. You might remember the pervasive TV commercials with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates, in which the pair move in with a suburban family to regain their connection with the average citizen.

Some tech bloggers accused the Seinfeld campaign of being irrelevant and alienating to the average consumer. The Net History video, however, is neither. It’s down to earth, clever and self-deprecating.

From the beginning, Bradley and Montgomery, the ad agency behind the video, wanted to catch people off guard with the video. ‘How do we ...

... talk to people in a way that’s surprising?’ Ben Carlson, the chief strategy officer of the agency, recalled asking during a brainstorming session.

At one point, the comedians discuss a new feature to Microsoft’s browser, called ‘private mode,’ that allows you to temporarily surf the Web without leaving a trace in your browser’s history. ‘I wonder what that’s for,’ snarks actress Beth Dover.

Later, the masked ninja, screams, ‘Developers, developers, developers!’ -- a parody of the old clip showing a sweaty, seemingly delusional Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, stomping around a stage.

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In almost a month’s time, the video has racked up 86,500 hits on YouTube and 80,000 on Break.com. Not exactly small potatoes, but compare that to other viral videos we’ve written about, like EA’s Tiger Woods short or Samsung’s unboxing clip, which each got about four times that amount in just a few days.

Granted, that’s not counting the people who view the video directly on Microsoft’s website -- those statistics weren’t immediately available. But part of the reason for the less-than-stellar results, Carlson says, is the relatively long run time. At five minutes, it’s longer than most YouTube shorts.

Another factor that certainly didn’t help is the lack of publicity given to the video by Microsoft. You can find a link to it buried somewhere on the product page for Internet Explorer. But outside of that and its premiere at a conference, the video, which comes from the same agency responsible for last year’s Mojave Experiment TV ads, has relied solely on word-of-keyboard for distribution, through channels like Twitter and e-mail.

Regardless, this coupled with the ‘It’s a PC’ commercials, in which cute hipsters boast the competitive prices of Windows computers, shows Microsoft has been able to add some cool to its image. The software manufacturer still doesn’t carry the same mega-hip cachet as competitor Apple. But it looks to have graduated from Gates and Seinfeld trying on loafers at a shoe store.

-- Mark Milian

Correction: This post originally stated that Kent Nichols played the role of the masked ninja. Nichols is actually the director and co-creator of the Ask a Ninja show.

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