July 10, 2006
microsoft marketing
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I’m not trying to take a swipe at Microsoft, but their “Your potential, Our passion” campaign just leaves me stone cold.
Especially juxtaposed against what their bloggers are trying to achieve.
Note to the marketing team: If you cannot communicate what your bloggers are communicating [and I’m not just talking verbally, either], you will fail.
Trust me. The answer lies with your bloggers.
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I guess they’ll keep throwing that kind of nonsense into our laps until they get rid of McCann or whatever paleozoic ad agency they hired to cover their ears and shout.
“We stand in awe of you and your potential”. Ok, while you do that, could you try and be less monopolistic, more standards-friendly and improve just a little the quality of your product?
To me that campaign sounds like this:
“Hi, we’re Microsoft, you might remember us as that company that once made something significant and interesting that a lot of people bought, but now we’re just a big boring dinosaur and we’re surrounded by all sorts of young scrappy upstarts that will probably kick our ass.…but here’s a $100 million marketing campaign to try to convince you otherwise!”
With Scoble gone, the answer has become harder for them to hear.
You’re dead right. I’m tired of apologising for our advertising. The dinosaurs particularly.
But… it’s a tougher challenge to imagine how the voice of the bloggers could be mapped into an advertising campaign. Or is it?
Assuming Microsoft finds a plausible rationale for their continued existence (“I’m too lazy to switch” doesn’t count) — I hope they’ll realize that they are participants in a conversation and not just making Pronouncements From On High.
Because that shit is just death for any brand — most especially theirs.
You should do a follow-up concerning microsoft software dialog box writers concerning how they alternately think that we are too stupid to do anything without being second guessed at least three times and yet we are tech savvy enough to understand the long, drawn out questions of vague specificity that come prior to the “click yes or no.“
Maybe it could be something to the degree of a boy and a girl in a school classroom and he is a future Microsoft dialog box writer and he writes to a girl.
Dear Susie:
Due to random events, I have seen you from across a room of elementary learning and since I find you not completely ugly I was wondering if you would like to commence some sort of midday food ritual.
Are you sure you want to do this?
Agree or Disagree.
That campaign is patronising in the extreme, especially as it bears absolutely no resemblance to the way microsoft conducts its business in reality.
Additionally its totally humourless, it doesn’t even have the unintentional humour of the L’Oreal or the Ferrero Rocher ads. Its an ad campaign for people who read self-help books and believe them.
Make people laugh, and have a grain of truth in your message. Its not really that difficult to understand.
Additionally should add, I moved to Mac OSX recently and I haven’t looked back. The OS doesn’t annoy me, it just lets me get on with what I want to do. I’m not really an apple evangelist, I just note that the software doesn’t patronise and confuse me at the same time.