Comments on: leo burnett and microsoft

By: David Everitt-Carlson

David Everitt-Carlson — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 06:59:16 +0000

Vinny, I don’t know you but I’d pay MORE money for THAT tune! I remember ole’ Ms. “B” to have been quite the canary. Ha! (did she really? how embarassing)
“When you need to go soft
cause hard won’t go
MicroSOFT does it
and it does it real slow”

By: vinny warren

vinny warren — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 10:19:06 +0000

i’d gladly pay money to hear the MP3 of the tune that Cheryl B. no doubt cooked up specially for Bill Gates.

By: John

John — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 15:01:13 +0000

And did it work? Did Mr. G. find an agency that understood his business because they used computers? Is that what made MS successful? Did he also find a ride to the airport with a taxi company that used computers because only a taxi company that used computers could understand his taxi needs? Did he eat only at restaurants that used computers? Did he buy his suits from a tailor who used computers?
Isn’t it funny how often such decisions are made based on the whim of a chief executive? My advice would be to find an agency that understands marketing, a taxi company that understands taxi rides and a tailor who understands tailoring, but that’s just me.

By: jonathan foster

jonathan foster — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 00:59:23 +0000

“It’s easy to say in a meeting…”
With repsect to meetings. If you want to get something done stop having them and stop getting everyone to agree with you. Consensus doesnt always lead to productivity. Thanks. Great post. Jonathan at http://www.theproblemwithreligion.com

By: Alastair

Alastair — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 06:19:44 +0000

Now here's a thing. Years ago I had a Mac, and learned to "compute" in Macworld. Self taught and all that. Then I switched to PCs because the ad agency I worked at put them on one's desk, although most people at the time were worried about "losing everything" if they touched the keyboard at all. See hilarious Norwegian comedy sketch about IT support in the middle ages http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX0-nqRmtos which just about summed it up. That would have been about the time of the Leo Burnett pitch to Microsoft, so it would be fair to say no agency anywhere 'got computers' back then. Recently I've got a Macbook again (now it's got Intel C2D and runs Windows Parallels, declaring my own interest in advertiser for both those clients). I do miss the keyboard shortcuts and silly quirks (like click start to stop). Everyone tells me they LOVE their Macs. No wonder Microsoft wants some of that.

By: dblwyo

dblwyo — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 20:12:24 +0000

This isn't just, or only, about coping with change and DNA changes. It's about re-thinking both businesses on multiple levels. What is MS & Yhoo business models & strategies - are they aligned with the world they want to go to ? Are their messages compelling, authentic (in Seth Godin's sense),do they support their customers ? On a operational level are the platforms and multiple product lines reconcilable ? Can the cultures, which are wildly divergent, be integrated ? Finally is the leadership in place ? Neither company has shown much strategic vision nor operational capability in adopting and adapting to these spaces yet both have great strengths. If they'd focus more on making what they have work then you'd have something as it is this strikes me as a recipe for multiple parallel, not serial, disasters. And nobody seems to be asking these fundamental business questions. FWIW I took these themes and broke them down as well as included comparisons of AOL and Google here: http://tinyurl.com/yotu2l

By: Clive Birnie

Clive Birnie — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 16:20:12 +0000

I would say yes to Douglas’s final question. In 1990 Apple was the shape of the future but proved incapable of taking their potential and conquering the world. It was MS that made the mass adoption of the PC as an essential utilitarian business tool possible. I worked with agencies in the early 90s that used their early adoption of technology as a selling point. They stood out from the crowd at the time as weird and geeky. So I hired them every time I had the power to make a decision.
But lets not forget the world runs on MS not OSX (?) not Google not Yahoo not Linux. 90% of Google searches are made on a computer running Windows and IE. Terry Leahy (CEO of Tesco) says he is always paranoid about the future and his competition. I sense MS are paranoid as well. Good. I suspect this will serve them well.

By: David Everitt-Carlson

David Everitt-Carlson — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 07:26:13 +0000

Ahh! I love the Apple comment! Let me relay another story, of which I was a party to:
“In frustration to an employee demanding computer support for graphics in the early 90s, the CIO exclaimed ‘Apples? The only godamn apples we need around here are the ones in the lobby!’” (The Leo Burnett Company’s trademark is an apple, and apples sit in a bowl at the reception desk on every floor in every office of every branch around the world)

By: Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 02:06:47 +0000

Interesting, but even if the agency had used computers back then, they still wouldn’t have been able to run Microsoft apps. Microsoft didn’t have any graphics or pagination offerings at the time.
Would it have been better had Gates walked around and everyone had Apples on their desks?

By: Tim Walker

Tim Walker — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 02:06:09 +0000

Bravo for this bit …
‘It’s easy to say in a meeting, “The world is changing, and we need to change with it”. And just as easy to get everybody in the meeting to agree with it. What’s harder is what happens after everyone has left the room. When everyone has to worry about keeping their jobs.’
… which could stand as the Grand Unified Theory of why it’s hard to get things done in a corporate setting. It’s hard enough to get *ourselves* to follow through on purely personal desires to change. (E.g. losing weight, getting out more, reading more books, whatever.) Translate it to a collective setting, and it gets much harder.
As for Microsoft, they have the luxury of ignoring (some of) your wisdom about cultural transfusion. But for the little folks … it’s simply not optional.

By: David Everitt-Carlson

David Everitt-Carlson — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 21:14:39 +0000

Yeah, I wasn’t at the meeting either. Maybe it never happened but it was told to me as a story by I don’t remember who.
I bought my own Powerbook in 1990 and had that until I went to Korea in 95, at which point I hoodwinked the tech people into giving me a company loaner for a business trip. (They didn’t know I was being transferred!) I kept that for the next two years, the only way I could get the company to support the cost! Oh, dear…

By: Mike Peter Reed

Mike Peter Reed — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 18:22:27 +0000

To paraphrase Ogilvy (again) “Use the products you intend to advertise”. Apparently that’s how he arrived at the copy for his Rolls Royce ad .….