Will a host of people you don’t recognize convince you to use IE9?

You have to give Microsoft credit, the company knows how to drop dollars. A set of new commercials for Internet Explorer 9, the company’s current browser, is making the rounds, and instead of going for one big name, Microsoft hired an entire cast of pitchman to hawk its software.

I feel a bit stodgy, but I honestly only recognized 40% of these new spokespeople for IE. Perhaps you will do better. Before you see the ad spots, we need to talk about what is actually going on. Microsoft, looking to boost the market and mind share of Internet Explorer 9, has hired celebrities of the second to fifth tier to talk about a piece of technology that they probably don’t use. We find the entire exercise to be slightly counterintuitive.

But perhaps the best part is that the commercials all focus on the ‘pinning’ feature of Internet Explorer 9, that allows for a website to be hooked to a user’s start bar. Let’s make a guess: What percentage of IE9 users know what pinning is? And more to the point, what percentage would care, even if they did? It’s not a killer feature, in our view. You decide. Get watching:

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Like we said, a bit confusing right? Perhaps most ‘off the wall’ is the ridiculous allusion made to Microsoft’s Packman arcade that is supposed to show off the hardware acceleration capabilities of IE9. Of course, most consumers wake up and fret about such things right before their morning coffee and mounting of Everest.

I do not see these ads doing anything to boost Internet Explorer 9’s market share, but I suspect they were fun to make. Sound off in the comments with your commentary.