A hunt for India’s ‘top 8’ explorers — that’s what the landing page says, garishly, in a font last used by 11-year-olds on their craft projects.
Here’s what visitors are promised: 8 of us will, apparently, ‘Win a Trip to Explore the top 8 Destinations India votes for.’ 8 of us will, apparently, ‘explore unknown territories and have the most unusual experiences.’ As far as I was concerned, an unusual experience had already begun. How unusual that a brand so entrenched online would pay someone money to create something so tacky. How unusual that no one at Microsoft stopped for a minute to think — ‘Is this the most net-savvy way to convince users to try IE8?’ How unusual that none of the featured videos — on automatic crash recovery, private browsing and web slices — were videos I would ever consider downloading in this lifetime.
And yet, because this was Microsoft, I persevered. Let me try the quiz, I told myself. And then, things just got worse: ‘Do you explore your way? Ever wondered why you like to sweat out on a mountain trek than chill out on a beach? That might explain why you like to browse your own way on the web. It’s simple. You are a certain kind of explorer. And therefore, different!’
Clearly, a semi-literate copywriter had conned an advertising agency into hiring him, before then conning Microsoft into paying for this piece of puerile rubbish. With every click, my unusual experience morphed from shock to horror. Is this what little Bill Gates had struggled for all those years ago, putting aside dating and dentist appointments so some moron would one day unleash this campaign upon an unsuspecting world?
There were ridiculous questions asked at every level, with worse answers, tacky Flash effects, and absolutely no attempt to engage with me as a consumer at any point. What the exercise left me with most was fear: Going by this promo, IE8 was probably downright awful. And even if it turned out to be a Chrome-killer, I’d be the last to find out because nothing would convince me to download it now.
And so, I continue to use Firefox in my ongoing search for well-executed campaigns. IE8 will have to wait.
