Microsoft has just pulled its latest ad for IE8, OMGIGP, delightfully shorthand for – “Oh my god I'm going to puke". This is a surefire way of getting everyone to search for the ad and look at it. Such as here on Youtube, or here on an australian news site, because of course you cant put the genie back in the internet bottle any more. So, is it really deserving of the current outcry?
In short, I think it probably is. It is bad on so many levels, some offensive such as the implication that it is still ok to view sites which make you vomit, as long as you do it using IE8s new private browsing function, some tasteless such as vomiting over someone, and some simply because creatively it sucks.
Is there such a thing as bad publicity today? I dont know, but I for one feel significantly less warm towards Microsoft today than I did yesterday before I had come across their IE8 ad, and while I am now aware of IE8, I really dont feel like downloading it right now.
