Microsoft's French love in new Windows Phone ad
In a new push for Windows Phone, Microsoft wants you to feel the true tension of love. The love between a man and his mobile phone applications. It is truly reminiscent of French cinema.
Love and Microsoft are entities that, at times, have had a fractious relationship.
However, take one glance at the new TV ad for Windows Phone and you will see just how much progress has been made to bring a little healing to that Microsoft feeling.
A man, who looks suspiciously moody and French, is leaving his apartment.
His lover is pleading with him to stay. But wait he has more than one lover. He has, well, five, six, seven of them. Well, he is French, right?
There's something strange about these lovers too. It's not that they seem tired after a night of passionate application to the art of lovemaking. No, these are simply passionate applications.
They are Microsoft Word, Internet Explorer, and, good Lord, is that Twitter twitching like, well, a technically troubled teenager?
How can this man, this louche, sleepy-eyed Frenchman, leave these sweet, tempting applications behind in his apartment while he goes off gallivanting with, who knows, a Snow Leopard?
But wait, this is not like those French movies where the ugly guy gets the girl, then gets the girls, and is still eternally unsatisfied with his existential lot.
No, this Frenchman has a sense of humor.
Just when you are about to burst into tears at his callous, Gallic behavior, he turns back toward his applications and waves his cell phone to show them that, yes, he loves them and, no, there is no second family of applications in Marseilles.
The applications, filled with love and iconic commitment, gaily skip down the steps of his apartment building and begin to bundle themselves into his car. Love is the journey, not the destination.
And, in a final gesture of untrammeled human humility, the Twitter icon knows its rightful place in this menage-a-many: the back end.
As it slides into the trunk, my heart hops, skips, jumps, and almost flies through my T-shirt as I whisper to myself: "Microsoft. It's a love thing."
It will take time to get used to the concept, but I know that, as in all relationships that start out with good intentions, everything is possible.