Business Video Made Funny By Microsoft!!??!!??
Microsoft is not really known for their sense of humor. Yet, they have done a nice job of putting together a funny corporate video that mocks Gmail as they try to promote Office 365. Not sure if the video has reached viral video status but one version of it has clocked in with more than 750,000 views on YouTube. The video first appeared at a Microsoft conference in July to rally their sales troops and supposedly has not been approved by Microsoft for public consumption. In fact, if you look closely at the video you will notice it is marked as Unlisted and typical keyword tagging used to promote videos has not been done. Unlisted video can only be seen if linked to or embedded on another website. Unlisted YouTube videos do not show up in Google or YouTube search results.
The sales video features Gmail Man (GmailMan). Gmail Man can’t seem to resist reading personal details of user emails as he serves up contextual advertising. Of course, in the video Gmail Man not only does lots of snooping he also gets the context wrong. The video is pretty funny. The video production company used by Microsoft did a great job of keeping the video funny and fast moving.
Of course, Microsoft doesn’t mention that although Gmail serves up ads their real competitor Google Apps has ads off as the default. One of the benefits of using funny corporate videos is you don’t necessarily need to tell the whole story.
One of the funniest things about the video is that Google themselves is nice enough to host it on their ad-serving video hosting service YouTube.
GmailMan Video
Rewatchable – Boston Videography