Above is a new ad for the new generation of Zunes.  It features a girl who touches her new Zune 2 and then finds herself immersed in some sort of bizarre world of her own imagination (I think) – that features huge pink bunnies, a Kangaroo hopping through one scene, and lots more very odd stuff.

My first reaction to this one is ‘Huh?’  It feels like it might be better enjoyed if you were high as a kite.  Even then you’d probably be fighting off a WTF feeling, but it might make you laugh I guess.  The dumbest thing about it, for me, is that the Zune, the actual product, gets only a tiny, cameo appearance.

Sadly, the new Zune Journey promo site is not any better – it also features a sort of ‘spacy’ theme (with cartoon stars with faces and whales swimming around), and is super-heavy on Flash effects and super-light on any useful information.  It’s dumb and makes me want to close it out before seeing any real info about Zune at all.

Part of what makes Apple’s ads so consistently brilliant is that they are simple, and they always show off the product itself to excellent effect. The new Nano ‘Fatties’ don’t need any huge pink friggin’ bunnies – they sell themselves if you do the ads right.

Microsoft really needs to do a whole lot better with this.  The Zune 2 line looks pretty good, and has even been getting a surprising amount of love on lots of mobile sites since it was announced – but I just can’t see this kind of marketing doing anything good for them.

What do you all think?  Am I missing the boat here – are the ads creative and brilliant?  Huge pink bunnies should be used much more in ads?

Via: Zune Thoughts