Microsoft is relying on a motley crew of LOLcats, cartoon unicorns and a white bunny rabbit in its opening TV ad salvo for Windows 7.

If you have a low tolerance for cuteness, like I do, the spot will make your head explode. Seriously. The ad stars Kylie, the 5-year-old previously seen in one of February's "I'm a PC" commercials (specifically the 30-second spot that demonstrated how even an unsupervised tyke with highly questionable motor skills could operate Windows Live Photo Gallery and e-mail).

The new ad shows Kylie, again with a mysterious lack of parental supervision, using a laptop to cycle through reviews of Windows 7. Midway through the spot, the camera view cuts to a slide show of the aforementioned LOLcats, unicorns and rabbits, alongside Windows-positive squibs from Gizmodo and other sites.

The ad, perhaps unsurprisingly, was slotted to run during the premiere of the new CW show "Vampire Diaries," whose viewing demographic would evidently react positively to the sight of a pink unicorn extolling the virtues of an operating system. Personally, the whole thing made me want to rewatch the last 15 minutes of Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch," just to regain some sort of equilibrium, but a.) I'm not the target audience here, and b.) I've been called a curmudgeon before my time.

In any case, the ad represents a marked improvement over some of Microsoft's more esoteric efforts at kicking off a campaign. Specifically, I'm thinking of the Bill Gates/Jerry Seinfeld commercials that kicked off Redmond's previous $300 million marketing effort. Audiences seemed to have a hard time grasping the concept, and advertising executives were quick to declare them a failure.

The "I'm A PC" ads that followed were received more positively, and Microsoft finally scored a solid hit with its "Laptop Hunter" campaign, by choosing to focus on the one thing that matters most to the majority of consumers purchasing new PCs in a down economy: price.

If the new Kylie ad is indicative of Microsoft tailoring the right ad to the right audience at the right time, then its massive ad campaign for Windows 7 may be off to a much smoother start than its previous marketing efforts. The weeks and months after the operating system's rollout on Oct. 22, however, will ultimately determine whether even hundreds of millions in ad dollars can effectively fight the drag of a moribund economy when it comes to PC and OS purchases.