Analysts continue to criticize Microsoft and consider its prospects as cloud computing and competitive products dim the prospects for the company’s operating systems.
A History of Failed Brands
Indeed, Microsoft has a long track record of failed brands. Here are a dozen examples:
Vista: This failure hurt the most. Microsoft is synonymous with operating systems, so a failed product in this category was a body blow. Released in January 2007, by April 2009, the software had only achieved a 24% share of PC operating systems. Most people still prefer to limp along using decade-old systems.
Kin Phone: It took years and billions of dollars to develop, but only sold 503 units after 48 days on the market. In terms of financial cost, this brand inflicted plenty of damage.
Tablet PC: The failure of this brand chipped away at Microsoft’s reputation as an innovator. Ground-breaking when Microsoft first announced it ten years ago, the Tablet PC was surpassed by better design and better marketing of the iPad and Samsung’s Android.
Zune: An innovative reputation can’t be won with copycat products. Microsoft’s Zune portable media player has not been able to effectively compete with Apple and its iPod.
MSN: As Microsoft struggled with MSN Search, which became MSN (with the butterfly), then Live Search and now Bing, Google started, grew, and now dominates.
WebTV: The internet over television sounded like the holy grail of convergence. But the product never produced a revenue stream as its tech-averse customer base created an expensive customer service nightmare.
Passport: Microsoft demonstrated branding cluelessness by originally calling this “thing” Microsoft Wallet, then Passport, then .NET Passport, then Microsoft Passport Network, then Live ID, then Windows Live as part of MSN. Phew! Moreover, entrusting sensitive information to a company known for operating systems with massive security bugs, Passport was a no-go. The service closed August 2009.
Encarta: Why pay for a limited and outdated encyclopedia when there is Wikipedia? This brand finally expired on March, 2009.
Bob: Bob was meant to be a user-friendly Windows interface, but turned into a laughing-stock that perennially makes the “worst of” lists. “Bob” appears to be an internal project name that somehow escaped as a public-facing brand name on an embarrassing product.
Money: Brand trust issues aside, Microsoft Money could not compete against online banks, free personal finance tools and more established and robust financial software products.
WinCE: Yup, this product made people “wince”. This personal digital assistant software brand represents years of trying, failing and eventually giving up.
“I’m a PC”: In answer to Apple’s successful “I’m a Mac” branding campaign came the inexplicable “I’m a PC” answer from Microsoft. In addition to adopting an “I know you are, but what am I” brand positioning, the campaign didn’t identify the brand Windows beyond a logo and said nothing about the “V-Word” (the failing Vista operating system). Why invest in advertising a generic like a PC?
Key Factors in Microsoft’s Branding Failures
1) Poor design: Apple’s brand is built on excellent, innovative design. Microsoft design is generic and old-fashioned.
2) Inconsistency: The Apple product brands all support key brand attributes of the parent company: coolness and easy usability. Microsoft branding is all over the map, with some product brands having almost no association with the parent company and with no brands sharing a unifying attribute that would bring them all together as Microsoft.
3) No jumping off point: Apple has always been about devices integrated with software, making it easy to create new products of all kinds. Microsoft was just an operating system, and a bug-ridden one at that.
4) Problems with trust: Microsoft has been seen as arrogant and pushy. Its reputation has never recovered from the anti-trust lawsuit in the 1990s.
5) Poor follow-through: Beyond a launch announcement and a few ads, many Microsoft products flounder unsupported.
Lots of money and really smart people are Microsoft strengths, but the company cannot reach its full potential without smarter branding. Little by little, newcomers like Google and old competitors like Apple will eat their lunch.
It’s clear that MS does need to clarify, execute and deliver their vision reliably. At the same time it MUST move far away from the their strategy of the last 10 years: throw everything and anything out there and hope that some of it sticks (or even makes it to market, much less be practical and work well) in order to compete with it’s perceived competition in the latest tech. This is eerily similar to the way IBM was operating in the late 80′s-90′s, when they would latch on to every hot PC software technology of the moment, deliver incomprehensible white papers to announce how they would design their new software “platforms” to connected up and down to every IBM enterprise product of the last 30 years. Then, two years later or whenever it was totally obsolete (which ever came last), they’d deliver Alpha versions accompanied by printed documentation that was often a foot thick, weighed 30 lbs and documented 10, 000+ APIs that were so bizarre that we would sometimes read them aloud for laughs. They would then repeat ALL of this, including the printed docs, for dozens of beta versions over the following 2 years until it would just stop, forgotten amidst the countless subsequent new initiatives. I worked in IT at large insurance company and I think they actually fully implemented approx 1% of these “products”. MS is doing the same thing, albeit with somewhat better percentages. Much of it simply being reactive and trying to make sure they can mach bullet points with their competition when they pitch to IT managers. It’s gotta stop.
BTW, I think your points about Vista are quite dated. MS’s response was to shut up and deliver the product that everyone wanted: a refined, reliable, incremental OS upgrade that focused on significant improvements under the hood, rather than superficial gee gaws via the marketing dept. Windows 7 does the things right that Vista did wrong and they deserve all the props for it. No one cares about Vista anymore nor should they. MS needs to hold on to whatever internal process got Windows turned around and marry it to almost everything they bring to market AND make room for they cool innovators they have to, well, innovate.
Last, IMO you really have to be careful when bringing Apple too deeply into the arguments. Yes, they have some great, very successful products. But the dark shadow of Jobs neurotic and paranoid need for total control and his insatiable greed for $ could quite conceivably erode the trust, loyalty and commitment of one group of customers that he can’t afford to lose: the software developers. He’s losing them at a much higher rate than the press seems to realize for the all the reasons that have been reported (e.g. single point of availability, irrational app store approval, dev tool restrictions and appalling $ percentages for iPhone/iPad) and he’s moving rapidly in the same direction for Mac OSX software via the Mac App Store, which has already dis-approved hundreds of successful Mac apps that had been listed and featured on Apples on web site until one week ago! Many of these developers relied on the Apple web site listing for a large part of their sales and now that has been completely snatched from them, for they same cynical and nonsensical reasons that were applied to iOS apps. If MS proved one thing it’s that the way to win the war is to get the developers to write to your API, which makes your OS the hotbed for the best software, etc. It can sneak up on Apple: the critical mass of developers and their hot apps will dry up. The competition only gets better and better. Job has lost his cool and let his inner control freak get the best of him before: he ignored the manner in which the open architecture of the Apple II had sprouted a tremendous supporting industry, whose products enhanced the Apple II and kept it competitive and relevant for many more years than it would have, had solely relied on Apple’s limited product. He won an internal battle at Apple and insisted that the first Macs were closed systems, which meant that their lack of expandability (e.g. no expansion slots for network adapters, enhanced graphics, etc.) left them unusable in most large businesses. Apple got buried by the exploding PC market and that bought the 4-5 years that MS needed to get a usable version of Windows (3.1) out. Users liked it, it was obviously going to be a HUGE market and MS got the Win32 API in decent shape, which meant developers could have a relatively stable target for software that would run on thousands of different PCs and stay compatible on future versions of Windows. I’ll grant that there were many warts and gotchas and MS did many reprehensible things, including unethical business practices but the bottom line was that Windows was good enough and it had a wide open market and distribution arena. Anyone can sell and distribute their software anyway they see fit. Jobs total control gambit with the Mac doomed it to marginal sales and almost destroyed the company. Sure Jobs came back and saved the company by cranking out consumer goods. Maybe that’s a sign that they days of the wider industry cross pollination are over and it’s going to be all about limited purpose, limited life, use it and move quickly to the new one products. I don’t think so, because I think humans fundamentally enjoy the diversity that more open approaches generate.
Excellent thoughts–this is a post in itself. Thank you!
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