Homeless in Vancouver: Pushing Windows 10 with babies, bacon, and ninja cats

It’s only six days until the release of Windows 10 and Microsoft is doing what it can to stoke the public’s appetite for the new bland blend of Windows 7 and 8.

And by “doing what it can”, I mean that Microsoft is unleashing all the babies, ninja cats, unicorns, narwhals, and bacon that it can muster.

Welcome to marketing in the age of social media, baby!

"These kids will grow up with Windows 10"

Three days ago, five television commercials were posted on the Microsoft YouTube channel; all featuring small children. The first one, titled “Introducing Windows 10: The future starts now”, is a wall-to-wall kinder-fest of babies from around the world crawling, mugging, gurgling, and even gnawing on their own feet (Windows can have that effect).

“Imagine: these kids won’t have to remember passwords or obsess about security,” the voice-over of the ad begins. “These kids will grow up with Windows 10″.

This campaign is on top of the 10 reasons to upgrade series of video spots (are they really TV commercials if everyone watches them on YouTube?).

Microsoft serves up the cool

Two days ago, the Microsoft blog had a “fun surprise” for Windows Insiders—the more than 1.5 million people who downloaded and used the Windows 10 Preview and provided feedback about their user experience to Microsoft.

Writing that, “One thing that is amazing about the internet is that it seems to be powered entirely by cats”, Microsoft released two new “I’m a Windows insider” ninjacat desktop backgrounds (Microsoft styles it lower camelcase).

One of the new images shows ninjacat holding the Windows 10 flag and riding a Tyrannosaurus rex, which is holding long calipers, while the second image shows ninjacat with flag astride a narwhal that has two crispy strips of bacon impaled on its tusk.

Microsoft even went so far as to animate the T. rex, and explain the calipers:

https://twitter.com/bdsams/status/623568460597989376

The first Windows Insider ninjacat, depicted carrying the Windows 10 standard while standing atop a fire-breathing unicorn, appeared on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington, back in March and spread widely over the Internet.