Windows 7 Launch Party video

Windows 7 Launch Party is a video advertisement designed to market Windows 7. It features a group of people in a kitchen explaining the concept of a party to launch the operating system in their own homes. The video received widespread criticism as a marketing effort,[77][78][79] and consideration was given as to whether it was intentionally bad, in order to generate content mocking it, or whether it was just poorly put together. Search Engine Watch commented "If you create something so bad that it goes viral, is it a public relations disaster or a video marketing triumph?"[80] Barbara Lippert, ad critic for Adweek magazine stated "This is so beyond-belief bad that I just cannot believe it’s for real ...the script is so fake, with all the sales messages in there… if this is what they think is hip, it’s just so sad — and poignant"[81] Rob Pegoraro of The Washington Post described the video by saying "by two minutes into the video, I could only hold my head in my hands, cringing and saying, “No, no, no, this can't possibly be real!”"[82] CNET described the video as looking "like the Food Network threw a cooking party only to have it geek out and go completely sideways", and came as part of a pattern of Microsoft advertising such as that for a previous piece of software that was such a "weird (to say the least) attempt to humanize software that failed so terribly I still find it hard to believe it was real."[83] Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist James Lileks said of the video: "If Microsoft had been put in charge of marketing sex, the human race would have ended long ago, because no one would be caught dead doing something that uncool."[84]