Microsoft taps Valentine’s Day as tool to promote, wait for it, Office Web Apps

Covering how Microsoft covers itself is always a fun game. The company’s ad campaigns tend to have extreme qualities. By this I mean that they are either fantastically good, or perfectly laughable. Today we have the second variety.

We’ll start with the following tweet:

Don’t be the guy who screwed up Valentine’s Day. Treat your lady right this holiday by switching to @Office Web Apps ow.ly/92NYA

— Why Microsoft (@whymicrosoft) February 13, 2012

I honestly thought that Microsoft was making a very meta joke – using the holiday to mock the use of the holiday as a talking point. I was wrong. They are serious. So serious that they actually put together a commercial to explain their message. That message, by the way, is that Office Web Apps handle Excel files better than Google Docs. That should have been the tweet, we think.

But they put out the video so that it would be watched, so who are we to rob you of the experience? Enjoy the awkward:

Now, Microsoft is right. Office Web Apps do a fine job at handling Excel files. Google Docs can have issues. Why they decided to make that point in this way, however, baffles. The last piece to this is that the post that Microsoft wrote as a companion to the video, is perfectly fine. To wit: “Don’t lose your mojo by using Google Docs to share documents. Share your information and ideas with Office Web Apps.” Very reasonable.

But the wrapper that Microsoft picked for this ruined the effect. Holidays are a bad promotional idea unless you sell chocolate. We now return you to your regurarly scheduled programming.