Scotch Rock meets Scotch Tape meets the Academy Awards meets John Lennon meets Microsoft

Grade: B

The collage is my new favorite medium. I wish there were more collages in the world. If you have collages, please e-mail a picture of one of them to me so I can look at them and say, "That's a nice collage. I wish I had one."

Even better, what you could do is take the pieces of your collage and animate them into a music video I hadn't watched in three years until I was inspired to watch it by a commercial and then said to myself "Whoa hey, that's a dope music video. And it's pretty similar to this music video for another song built off another simple yet memorable guitar riff and another even more simple bass line."

And then, while you continue to dictate my monologue, I'll come across this Oscar-nominated animated short built around an interview a fourteen year old had with John Lennon in 1969 and say "Wow that interview wouldn't have been that interesting if it hadn't been animated so interestingly. "

After that I'll remember that my new infatuation with collage began a few days ago when I watched some new Microsoft ads. Ads like this one and this one and this one and this one, which were directly inspired by the Lennon film, which probably wasn't directly inspired by the Franz Ferdinand video, but I bet Franz Ferdinand were inspired by John Lennon. They're real fun to watch, but they aren't terrifically informative. I'm going to stick to the WestJet ad for this discussion but I encourage you to watch all of them.

Before seeing this commercial I had never heard of WestJet. From what I gather, however, they are the worlds hippest airline. Such hipness is introduced when the faceless interviewer greets WestJet's CEO simply as "Durf," and is reinforced at commercial's end, when Durf says "You're screwed, brother." Dag, WestJet, you must be pretty cool. And if you’re kickin’ it with Microsoft, then Microsoft must be pretty cool too, n’est-ce pas? I don’t really understand why you’re kickin’ it with Microsoft, though.

Maybe it has something to do with culture. Apparently, WestJet has a strong culture that they’ve been able to maintain for years despite their number of employees rising from 200 to 7500. And because Durf can’t look everyone in the eye anymore, he has to rely on technology as a strategic driver of his company. I don’t really know what this means, but I think he implies that technology helps maintain his company’s culture, and specifically I imagine webconferencing, e-mail, buddychats, and tweeting.

I like to think that Microsoft could do one better than tweeting, though, but this commercial doesn’t give me a clear indication of what that would be. Microsoft has no voice until the commercial’s end, when a fortune from a fortune cookie that I only read the third time I watched the commercial because it goes by so fast and is too small on the screen to distract me away from Durf’s hipness briefly flashes, “Does your enterprise software keep everybody on the same page?” Well, Microsoft, my business is a blog that only has one page and one employee, so yes. But hypothetically, if I had multiple pages and a few interns, or if was in charge of buying software for a business with a market capitilization between 100 million and 1 billion, then I would question whether we're on the same page. Then again, I don’t know how your enterprise solutions software will help get us there if we aren't.

Instead of offering a specific solution, Microsoft seems to offer the ability to make your company more like WestJet. I think this is a sufficient argument for a commercial. If Microsoft can make me a profitable and admired company marked by rapid growth and happy employees, which is what I have determined WestJet to be, then sign me up. Just know that I’m going to be skeptical and ask a lot of questions before I give you any of my money.


Artistically this commercial is great. The animation style is new enough to hold my interest and full of wonderful transitions, such as when the pawn becomes a dumbbell propped up by the pointer finger of culture, or when the eyes align with airplane windows suggesting both WestJet’s service as an airliner and the difficulty of interaction due to distance that Microsoft will overcome. The lowtech look and lowfi sound give the commercial an appeal that suggests to me I won’t be overwhelmed by Microsoft’s techonological prowess, but welcomed by their creativity. That’s a good thing.

Suggested Ads: A similar commercial featuring Sean Carter talking about Rocawear (though Rocawear is now owned by a conglomerate, so while Hova still has a large say in the business it may not be suitable for this commercial) or me, talking about my blog.

Tidbits: See what the artist of “I Met the Walrus” has to say about Canada, home of WestJet, a little after the four minute mark of the film.