Microsoft’s anti-Google advertisements

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Agencies: Wunderman, Y&R, VML
Territory: Global
Verdict:4/5

The world of Microsoft advertising is occupied by ordinary, PC-using people falling into nefarious privacy traps laid by Google.

In the company’s latest campaign, its second under the “Scroogled” banner, a bright young woman and not-quite-so-bright young man are in their too-perfect home. He is gazing into a Microsoft Surface device but he is puzzled: why is he seeing adverts for bankruptcy services?

Because he uses Gmail, she explains. When a friend wrote that his addiction to the new pie shop in town would require a second mortgage, Google read the message and assumed he was in financial trouble. He falls backwards. She grabs his plate, takes a bite of his pie and delivers the punchline: “You need email that respects your privacy – and less pie.”

Microsoft was itself on the receiving end of some of the most cruelly effective competitive advertising in the shape of Apple’s “Get a Mac” campaign, which personified the PC as a nerd.

Microsoft’s attack lacks both the humour and the devastating put-down. But when it comes to privacy, the company has identified a creeping concern about Google, and touches a nerve.