As operating system launches go, Windows 7 has been a pretty sweet one for Microsoft. The reviews are mostly thumbs-up, and aside from some unintentionally hilarious videos promoting Windows 7 launch parties, the company has mostly done things right.
Today, the Microsoft site is featuring a running series of tweets praising the new OS (though they're running at least a day behind -- so much for real-time Web search). They're also a bit too uniformly positive, so you know somebody's cherry picking. Still, it's a clever idea.
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According to the New York Times' Media & Advertising blog, Microsoft is planning a series of 7-second videos on YouTube and Windows.com extolling the virtues of Win 7, and a series of 7-word updates on NFL games on the major broadcast networks. (My favorite geek humor site has a few other ideas on what Microsoft might do.)
Here's my favorite gimmick: In Japan, Microsoft has convinced Burger King to sell a meat sandwich with 7 all-beef patties stacked on top of each other like poker chips. That tower of bovine power is called the Windows 7 Whopper.
But the real Windows 7 Whopper is this claim: "1 billion = 7." That's the new mantra in Microsoft's ads. The Times' Stuart Elliott explains the rationale behind the funky math:
...many ads use a slogan, “1 billion = 7,” suggesting that the billion people who use PCs helped bring forth the new operating system.
