Are you a Mac, a PC, or Both?

With all of these ads coming out for Microsoft by by ad agency Crispin, Porter + Bogusky - I'd like to know...are you a Mac, a PC or both?

How does that make you feel? Do you like your Mac or PC?

Interesting article I read a while back in Fast Company about Alex Bogusky, the man in charge of these ads. He's a maverick. Though I don't know if he's gonna be able to make me a PC lover...I like how takes on these types of challenges head on. (Oh yes and Eric bro - he's the one you can blame for that crazy looking Burger King guy.)

"For nearly a decade, the unhip have flocked to Bogusky in the hope that a little of his mystique might rub off. There is no more adept a mechanic of cool, and Bogusky can give it -- and take it away. In 1998, he helped strip the sexy gloss from cigarette smoking with his raw, award-winning "Truth" campaign. In 2001, he subverted the SUV and Hummer fad by getting consumers to embrace "tiny" with his media-bending stunts for the Mini Cooper. More recently, he resurrected Burger King's 1960's-era "King" character, turning it into an unlikely icon, which has since done everything from date reality-TV pinup Brooke Burke to appear in his own Xbox video game that has sold 3.5 million copies.

Bogusky is famous for pushing clients to the edge. His TV work for Volkswagen included a close-up of a horrific, fatal-seeming car crash; for Orville Redenbacher, he called the deceased popcorn pitchman back from the dead; for Virgin Atlantic's business travelers, Bogusky offered up mock porn on a hotel TV network. "What Crispin has been able to do consistently is not just produce breakthrough work, but actually create new audiences for brands," says Mary Warlick, who runs the One Club, which awards creative excellence in advertising.

Now Crispin has been handed perhaps its biggest challenge to date: Microsoft. The tech giant stunned the ad world in March when it passed over safer choices like Fallon, JWT, and its agency of record, McCann Worldgroup, and awarded its new $300 million consumer-branding campaign to Crispin. It was an act of courage or desperation, depending on whom you ask. Over the past couple of years, Microsoft's already problematic reputation in some circles -- as the soulless, power-hungry purveyor of lackluster products -- has suffered a series of self-inflicted wounds. It spent two years and $500 million on the media blitz around the long-delayed Windows Vista launch, only to see the January 2007 "Wow" campaign, which likened Microsoft's new operating system to Woodstock and the fall of the Berlin Wall, derided as arrogant and creatively void. Vista itself sold poorly, leading to price cuts of up to 40%. Worst of all, the flop bred a new generation of Microsoft haters. "Microsoft has really lost control of its image," says Rob Enderle, an influential advisory analyst for tech companies including Dell, HP, and Microsoft. And with its two most formidable competitors -- Apple and Google -- boasting their own consumer cults, that's the last thing Microsoft can afford to do."