Microsoft posted a new video recently that perhaps all advertisers could learn a lesson from, which is, to learn from others’ mistakes.

This video was unfortunately released publicly on their YouTube channel and served to the lions of the online world to rip apart. I think it was their intention to present this as an advertising platform for agencies and media buyers, however, they may have overlooked the very important opinionated end user, especially when it comes to the very in-your-face advertising that is displayed here.

The take away point here is to understand the importance of creating a positive and unobtrusive online branding presence. Similar to what was talked about in the previous post, viewers want to be entertained, engaged in someway without really knowing they are being advertised to and if that’s not the case, well, at least offer some kind of incentive! We love free stuff! And we will click on anything to get it…most of the time.

Not to be too harsh on Microsoft Advertising, because I can see where they were going with this, trying to intertwine advertising on XBox with the user and their personal social media pages, however, I have to agree with this comment made by one of the video viewers: “Oh man… I thought interactive ads meant cooler things. Like instead of there being an actor, kinect could place me into? the ad (or something less fancy).”

That said I think there is a little more work to be done with this platform before its release, unless of course the initiative has totally been canned after the hugely negative response. Come on Microsoft, you can do better than that!