The big news on Madison Avenue is that those wacky/terrible Microsoft ads starring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld are about to come to an abrupt end (just like this sentence). Apparently, the plan all along was to phase them out and then launch a new campaign “audaciously embracing” the Apple created slur, “I’m a PC”. Yeah, we’ll see how that goes.

Carrying the theme “Windows. Life without walls,” the new ads will show Microsoft “audaciously embracing” the phrase “I’m a PC” — which has been so successfully tarnished by Apple Inc.’s ads during the past two years — in order to rehabilitate it, reported The New York Times.

One of the new commercials will even show a real Microsoft engineer who is a ringer for John Hodgman, the actor who plays the abused PC character in the Apple ads, introducing himself: “Hello, I’m a PC, and I’ve been made into a stereotype,” according to the Times. [Computerworld]

The Real John Hodgman at Union Hall (09/07/08)