Microsoft to begin multi-million dollar Vista ad campaign

9 July 2008 14:15 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

Microsoft is to begin a multi-million dollar advertising campaign to promote the Vista operating system, as an executive admits the current Apple "Get a Mac" adverts have "caused some impact".

However, the most recent Pocket-lint reader poll suggests this could be too little too late for the software giant, with the Vista damage already done.

In our latest survey, we asked you: "Should Microsoft just give up on Vista?" and a whopping two-thirds of you said "yes".

It might interest that 66% to know that Brad Brooks, Microsoft's VP of Windows Vista consumer marketing, confessed publicly this week during a keynote address at Microsoft's annual Worldwide Partner Conference the problems with Vista:

"We broke a lot of things. We know that, and we know it caused you a lot of pain. It got customers thinking, hey, is Windows Vista a generation we want to get invested in?"

In the coming weeks Microsoft will launch a "huge" ad campaign with the tagline "Free the People" to promote the OS, that's said to be worth "hundreds of millions of dollars".

Brooks said of the Apple campaign: "We've got a pretty noisy competitor out there. You know it. I know it. It's caused some impact. We're going to start countering it".

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