There must something in the water in Seattle.  Microsoft has turned to country music legend Dolly Parton to pitch Internet Explorer 8.  Specifically, IE8′s new WebSlices feature which allows users to effectively bookmark their sites of interest and receive notifications when those sites are updated within their browser.  A nice new feature – but not really that newsworthy.  What is more interesting in Microsoft’s recent ad and promotional campaign which targets the “common” user – trying to soften and humanize the corporate giants image.

Check out the Dolly Parton video clip below:

What do you think of Microsoft’s media campaign – attempting to “humanize” their products?  Is it working?

It seems to me that this is another attempt by Microsoft to use marketing instead of product development and engineering to compete.  Don’t get me wrong, IE8 has a number of improvements (many long overdue).  But does it hold a candle to Mozilla’s Firefox or Google’s Chrome?  Sorry Safari – Apple still needs to catch up quite a bit in the browser wars.

I don’t think so.  What do you think?

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