HERE is marketing muscle and then there is Microsoft. After all, what other company would spend five times as much to promote a product upgrade as it did on an upgrade just two years before?

Could it be that Microsoft is finally hearing footsteps from competitors in the office suite software market?

Analysts say maybe so; Microsoft says of course not.

At hand is the introduction today of a $150 million advertising campaign to promote the latest version of Microsoft Office. The company hopes to transform the suite's image from that of desktop equipment that is taken for granted to a system that can make everyone a winner. The system, this time around, is portrayed less as a crucial tool for personal productivity than as a way to aid collaboration and team success.

One goal, analysts said, is to fend off challenges from competitors like Sun Microsystems, which has introduced its own StarOffice suite of business programs, and I.B.M., which is aggressively pursuing small and medium-size businesses with software and hardware, and so solidify Microsoft's already intimidating market position.

"They have an awesome presence in the small and medium-sized business market," said Richard G. Sherlund, a software industry analyst at Goldman Sachs in New York. "Having said that, everyone wants to get into that market. I.B.M., Sun, Oracle and others want to compete against them in that space."

But an executive at Microsoft said that persuading Office users to upgrade from older versions was also crucial. "This is more robust and broader than everything we've done in the past," said the executive, Michael Dix, director for Office branding at Microsoft. "Our primary competitor is ourselves from our past."

For Microsoft to battle the biggest marketing behemoth out there — itself — takes money, said Robert Lerner, senior analyst at Current Analysis in Sterling, Va.

"Microsoft is not a stupid company," Mr. Lerner said. "They're very aggressive."

So the ad budget for the next six months, expected to be $150 million to $200 million, far eclipses the $30 million spent to promote the introduction of Office XP two years ago.

Perhaps another measure of Microsoft's commitment to the project is visible in the commercials and print ads themselves. They are tongue in cheek, and aim broadly at anyone who uses computers at work, showing top executives and cubicle-dwellers alike celebrating business successes as if they were major sports championships.

One spot shows team members taking turns with the scissors as they cut down the screen behind an overhead projector, the way college players cut down the basketball net after a big game.

Print ads, including four-page spreads running early in the campaign, show scenes like office workers piling onto one another in a way reminiscent of the pileups on a baseball diamond when a big game is won.

The challenge for the Microsoft agency, the San Francisco office of McCann-Erickson Worldwide Advertising, was to communicate computer power and human excitement at the same time. An agency executive, Michael McLaren, executive vice president and worldwide account director for Microsoft, said Office needed a big branding campaign to make people focus on it.

"Office, in some respects, is probably the most underestimated brand in the technology space," Mr. McLaren said. "People know it's there but take it for granted." McCann-Erickson is part of the Interpublic Group of Companies.

Some analysts were skeptical that the sports analogy would translate into sales. "That's not how people think about their jobs," said Ted Schadler, principal analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass. "No computer ever turned their employee into a sports star."

Still, Mr. Schadler added, Microsoft really has improved the Office suite. "They've got some real stuff that people should — as they start to understand what it does — start to put some real money behind."

Earlier campaigns emphasized straightforward and pragmatic appeals to the capabilities of the product, Mr. McLaren said. This time, he said, he wanted to reach out and "grab 'em by the lapels and say, `You gotta check this out.' "

Some of the budget may be used for a more straightforward campaign in magazines like Computer World and aimed at technology workers. But the bulk of the budget will buy ad time and space for the broader campaign in places like "The West Wing" on NBC; "C.S.I." on CBS; cable networks like CNN, Fox News and the Travel Channel; and newspapers like The Wall Street Journal and magazines like Forbes and Fortune.

Some may be happy to hear that the campaign shows no sign of the overeager cartoon mascot of Office, and star of an earlier Web campaign, called Clippy, a talking animated paper clip that used to pop up on users' screens to offer help at all the wrong moments. That feature still exists, deep within the Office menus, but must be activated before it springs to life again.

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