Maybe it's not that good with the butterfly

Ever since MSN said earlier this week it would be launching a big new campaign to let everyone know it, too, has really good search, (just like Google and Yahoo and on and on), we’ve been wondering about the fate of the butterflies. Not that colorful, delicate, little butterfly logo—which is sticking around—but the big, obnoxious people dressed in velour butterfly costumes that used to show up on people’s porches and elsewhere to tell them the benefits of MSN, their antennae dancing weirdly atop their heads. Once famously, we even saw several dozen of them rollerblading in circles outside an America Online event at Lincoln Center, carrying pro-MSN placards and giving AOL execs angina. It was their finest moment.)

Well, according to one person who should know, Jeff Huggins, a co-ecd at McCann-Erickson San Francisco, the star of the new campaign is, well, the search bar, which, last time we checked, didn’t come in velour, or have wings. Bummer. “It’s about search, about Microsoft’s commitment to search,” he explained, saying of the butterfly guy (and presumably his relatives), “He’s going on vacation.”

Sadly, the world has just become a much tougher place for out-of-work actors.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor and Brian Morrissey

February 4, 2005 in Morrissey | Permalink