David Webster, recently named chief strategy officer of Microsoft’s central marketing group, sat down last week to talk about his new role and how the Windows 7 advertising and marketing campaign is playing.

In Windows 7 ads, featured people take credit for new features in the operating system, which started selling in October with the tagline, “Windows 7 was my idea.”

The theme of real customers talking about Windows 7 played off the theme of Microsoft’s “I’m a PC” ads, which showed PC users. It also followed the “laptop hunter” ads, which showed real customers shopping for a computer. The ads were a response to Apple’s long-running ad campaign portraying John Hodgman as the PC, a sad sack who couldn’t get his computer to work.

The real-customers theme will echo through Microsoft’s other product launches this year, Webster said, including Office 2010, Internet Explorer, Windows Live features and Windows Phone 7.

Here is an edited interview below with Webster, who joined Microsoft in 2001. Webster says if he were in a Windows 7 ad, he would want George Clooney to play the movie version of himself.

Q: How is Windows 7 ad campaign going?

A: Windows 7 is doing well as a product. Customers like the product. They like the ad campaign. They like the commercials we've brought in from other countries. ... What they're hearing in the marketplace is consistent with what we're telling them.

Here is a Windows 7 television ad:

Q: Is that different from what happened with Windows Vista marketing?

A: With Windows Vista there was a dissonance between the marketplace and what the customer was reading in the media. [With Windows 7], we're not making bold claims, we're not changing the world. As a message, they [individual customers] have made a meaningful contribution to the product. They like that. Because it's true. ...

That's why we're using regular people who look like them. The image that they are sad sacks, that's not true. ... Instead of actors, they get it -- this guy, this schlub in the shower -- I can relate to this.

Here is a Microsoft television ad that came out that obliquely promotes Windows Vista:

Q: Are they really regular people or are they actors who look like regular people?

A: They are regular people, as opposed to actors who act like regular people.

Q: If you were the regular guy in the shower, what movie star would you want to play you?

A: I've always said George Clooney.

Here is George Clooney:

From Pri0

If you have a brand like Windows being used by everybody, you can go middle of the road, say that, "We're for everybody," or you can say, "This is your brand."

Q: I've heard all the research that millennials want everything customized for them. Customized frappucinos. Everything Apple has an "i" in front of it. Yahoo has "you" in "It's Y!ou." Is millenial messaging driving the Windows 7 campaign as "my" idea?

A: Millennials have an expectation that marketing is more organic, less polished. If you're building brands, you ignore that at your own peril. ...

Harley Davidson has HOGs, Harley Owner Groups. Those are mostly old dudes with beards. Everyone wants to take a brand and make it their own. Every brand that wants to drive loyalty long term needs people to want to belong to it.

The "I'm a PC" [campaign] execution was the same thing. It was celebrating the individual. I will stand up and be counted. Our hypothesis is if you have one billion users, you don't have to invent people.

Here is the Yahoo "It's Y!ou" campaign:

Q: Why did you feel you had to address how a competitor like Apple was painting you as John Hodgman?

A: For a while, we took the high road. We were a big brand. Ultimately the reason was we had to defend our users. They were painting our users as schlubby dorks. We heard our users. Ultimately it was about being advocates on their behalf. Most of the world is PC users. They're not a bunch of dorks.

Here is an Apple ad with John Hodgman as a PC and Justin Long as a Mac:

Q: How do you measure success of new advertising?

A: There's general perception data about how people feel about Windows. The campaign helps people feel good about Windows and makes them more likely to recommend Windows to other people. At the brand level we're connecting.

Q: What about behavior?

A: There is purchase intent, how many minutes they spend on PC locator online [application]. It's their hearts and heads; and then it's their clicks. We're happy with it. We've seen improvement in referrals to OEMs -- the Best Buys of the world -- in the minutes people spend on the Windows site.