Microsoft late Sunday kicked off a new TV ad campaign that for the first time portrayed its lineup as a cohesive family. The lead ad, “Epic Share,” shows a daughter using a Windows Phone to capture her father playing Dance Central 2 on an Xbox 360 with a Kinect, share it with a Windows 7 PC, and edit with her brother in Windows Movie Maker before it goes live on the web. A second focuses just on the PC but shows a son successfully using a PowerPoint presentation to convince his parents to get a dog.
“It’s a great time to be a family,” the ads always show towards the end with a Windows 8-style tile layout, before a narrator says “it all starts with a Windows 7 PC.”
The ads, produced by Microsoft’s favorite ad agency Crispin Porter & Bogusky, hope to show a cohesion that the company has been working towards for the past few years but which it rarely advertises. Microsoft has made a point of linking its music, video, and web services across the three platforms but pitches them separately; it’s commonly established that many Xbox users aren’t necessarily aware Microsoft creates it or that they can use Zune music or video on both platform.
