Jay-Z, Gwen Stefani to star in Windows Phone 8 ads?

A report suggests that celebrities will show how Windows Phone 8 makes their lives more personal.

November 11, 2012 12:01 PM PST

Windows Phone 8, no problem?

(Credit: Rick Ross/YouTube Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

If you're going to ensure that your new Windows Phone 8 is going to be respected as the only machine with which to be seen, you don't want has-beens holding them in ads.

You want Jay-Z, not Jay Leno.

And so the rumor is that Microsoft has employed not merely Jay-Z, but one of the queens of dressing-up and occasionally singing -- Gwen Stefani -- to implant its phones into the cool side of human brains.

According to the Sun, these fine aspirational figures will be thrust forward any minute now to bend your mind.

They are to be joined in the U.K. by popular charmers such as James Corden and Holly Willoughby, host of lovely shows like the U.K.'s version of "The Voice" (Her ad is embedded here.)

Microsoft has already given everyone a clue that its design is different because it's "Reinvented Around You."

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There's already a version featuring the great man himself -- Steve Ballmer.

And so where Apple hired the likes of John Malkovich and Martin Scorsese to prove Siri's vast intelligence, it seems that Jay-Z and Gwen Stefani will prove that brains are nothing when compared to the sheer currency of being hiply current.

Whenever I see those Windows tiles, I want to play with them. They have an attitude about them. They offer a certain simplicity that seems to have its heart in Mondrian.

Although some cruel critics believe it has its heart in AOL Kids around 1996.

Of course, real beauty might blossom if Microsoft manages to create its own phone, one that offers an even more innovative spirit of design (and lightness) than Nokia's Lumia 920.

Still, I look forward to Stefani offering a new clothes line inspired by the Windows Phone 8 tiles. Fashion's all over the place these days. A little like the phone market.