Microsoft has been promoting Windows 8 over the past several months in TV commercials by actually showing Windows 8 in action. Users are seen accessing the Start screen, playing with apps like Fresh Paint and generally getting used to the touch UI.
Today, Microsoft uploaded a trio of new Windows 8 TV ads on its official Windows YouTube channel and, well ... there"s just no other way to say it. These ads, all under the "Training Camp" title, are some of the oddest we have ever seen that have been made to promote any version of Windows.
The final ad shows three women being told how to make themselves presentable with makeup in 10 seconds. Two of the women try and fail to do so but the third just plants her face on a table filled with some kind of makeup material and voila; she"s fresh and beautiful looking.
Aside from the fact that the content of each ad is very strange, the other thing that"s noticeable is that a Windows 8 PC is nowhere to be found in any of these commercials. Microsoft seems to be using the ad"s content as a metaphor for features in Windows 8. The watermelon ad is linked to the touchscreen experience and the piano-ping pong clip is meant to show that Windows 8 can do two things at once.
The third commercial is supposed to show that Windows 8 can be both "beautiful and fast" but that"s reaching a bit for that metaphor to work. In any case, these three new commercials will certainly be talked about a lot, no matter how people feel about them in the end and perhaps that was Microsoft"s general idea.
Update: Microsoft apparently was not ready to show these videos yet. All three have been switched to private mode on YouTube.
Update 2: The videos are back up.
Source: Windows on YouTube