Microsoft Songsmith Commercial
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN cites it as an infamous example of terrible advertising, though a few mention how big a splash it made in 2009.
What it is
A promotional commercial for Microsoft Songsmith, software that generates backing music from a vocal recording. The ad became widely known for its awkwardness.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2009 to 2020.
What Hacker News said
Cites pedalpete · 2009-02 · on “Microsoft Songsmith creates an interesting song from just a voice recording”
This is a much better promotional tool for songsmith than that 'internal' video microsoft put out a few weeks ago. [this video] this is actually appearing to be a pretty amazing product.
Cites spoppy · 2019-11 · on “Microsoft Comic Chat”
Do you mean SongSmith? That wasn't 1990s, more like 2009, but made quite a splash at the time with their famous video commercial. [LINK] [this video]
Critical scrame · 2010-09 · on “New Google ad strategy: 10 minutes of a guy saying "pizza"”
Microsoft has a long history of terrible advertising. Here's ballmer in a tacky suit selling windows 1.0: [LINK] Windows 386 (second half, bear with it): [LINK] Songsmith: [this video] And of course, the absolute worst: [LINK]
Critical k-mcgrady · 2013-05 · on “Xbox One Revealed”
The commercial for Songsmith was one of the worst things I'd ever seen: [this video] I really wish your comment hadn't reminded me of it :)
Critical skuthus · 2020-06 · on “YouTuber creates fake Nirvana song using artificial intelligence”
Also, to follow up, the introduction campaign for Songsmith is one of the worst things I've ever seen [this video]