We know that Microsoft has post-advertising chops; we've seen them do it before. The software behemoth's latest efforts from Crispin Porter + Bogusky have fallen short of post-advertising standards and dogma. (Read yet more about it here...if you can take it.) But someone up there in the City on the Hill (a.k.a. Redmond) is listening. Roll tape:

Unlike Vista and especially Office 2007, the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference isn't a flawed product. And so the options for post-advertising work open up. The above spot, ostensibly a B2B ad, looks to have been done internally (like The Mojave Project and Bring the Love Back...see a pattern?). The spot is really about the rise and fall of Brian, a new employee with a "great" idea. But embedded in the spot is a cheesy boy-band vid promoting the conference. Now, MS doesn't get points for originality here; it's been done to death. But the company does get kudos for storytelling and use of metaphor.

MS has the chops to do good stuff like this, but does it have the products or the balls?