How Microsoft Can Fix Their "Stodgy" Image

Recently, brandchannel.com asked about 2,000 people a set of questions regarding popular brands. Questions like "What brand do you think is truly 'green'?" and "What brand can you not live without?" Presented on their Web page are the top five answers for each question, with percentages and some choice quotes. Apple came out on top in many of the categories, with many lavish quotes about how wonderful the company and its products are. Microsoft didn't fare so well, "winning" only those questions that have a negative connotation, such as "If you could rebrand any brand, what brand would it be?"

Of course, this is about as poorly constructed a poll as you can get. It's an online survey of site readers with a relatively small sample group, which means fans (or employees) of any company could easily flood the system and skew results. Still, it holds some merit. If Apple fans flooded the online polling, the results might not be accurate, but it then begs the question: Why doesn't Microsoft (or Ford, or Coca-Cola) have the kinds of fans that will flood online surveys in its favor? In truth, I think Microsoft's brand power certainly has languished in recent years, and the trend is probably continuing to sour as its competitors in multiple areas (Apple, Firefox, Sony, etc.) continue to pressure the company with market-share gains.

All hope is not lost, though. Microsoft is a powerful brand that is certainly known by a huge percentage of the populace, and making sure the brand conjures good thoughts and feelings can have a big payoff. Here are five ways Microsoft can turn their brand around.

Five Ways to Fix Microsoft's Brand Image

1. Cooler advertising: Microsoft shows all the time with their internal corporate videos that they have a sense of humor. Their ads in magazines and on TV are the very definition of boring, though. I can just see a room full of marketing executives analyzing ads, making sure there's nothing that would offend anyone even a little, scouring ads to make sure every ethnic and racial group is represented, going over a "bullet point list" of product features that need to be mentioned, etc.

There are too many cooks in the kitchen. Let one creative type make an "image" ad that doesn't discuss any product features, with a single goal in mind: Make people smile (or even laugh) and associate that feeling with a Microsoft product usually not tied to such feelings like Office or Vista. Here's a hint for the marketing people: Showing other people smiling and laughing in your commercial is not the same thing

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2. Put the old guys away: Never trot out Steve Ballmer or Ray Ozzie at a press conference, convention keynote, or product demo where there are going to be lots of users and press in attendance. Save those guys for the corporate meetings and business briefings. I know they're high-ups in the company, but they're not great public presenters for an age where thousands of potential customers are going to watch streaming video online of their pitch. The company has more dynamic, youthful execs (lower-level execs). Train them to be good presenters and have a little fun on stage. Conference presentations are no longer seen by just the few hundred people in the room, they're seen by your customers. You'd think a company that keeps trying to launch a YouTube competitor would get that.

3. Xbox marks the spot: Hey, the Xbox brand is great. People love their Xbox 360s. People all over the country camped out overnight in the November cold to get 'em—how many other Microsoft products got that kind of reception? Not Vista, that's for sure. The Xbox brand resonates better with its customers than the Microsoft brand not only because it's an entertainment device, but because the experience is totally different from other Microsoft products.

4. Open the Kimono: Isn't it odd that Apple, one of the most closed, hostile, and secretive computer companies around, is so well-loved? How do you combat that? By going the other way! Actually, Microsoft has opened up a lot in the last several years, letting its employees blog about what they like (within reason) and demoing cool new technologies like Worldwide Telescope. But Microsoft works on a ton of cool things that it never shows anyone. And it works on them too long, letting more nimble companies beat them to the punch.

5. Make Windows 7 the First Non-Windows OS: Your marketing execs will never let this fly, but you shouldn't listen to them. The next Windows after Vista should not be called "Microsoft Windows ______." Drop the Windows moniker from your next OS. Seriously! Sure, your marketing guys will jump up and argue about all the "brand equity" in Windows. Bullcrap. A past history of zillions of sales does not automatically equal future success.

What "equity" there is in the Windows brand is not positive, it's baggage. The expectation is that a "Windows" OS is not secure (even though that's not entirely true), hard to use (again not true), buggy (okay, sort of), crashes a lot (that can certainly happen), and so on. Yes, everyone knows "Windows." And they hate it. It's time to re-brand the most valuable part of your business. Nothing will tell the public, and corporations, that Microsoft is "moving on to something better" and that "maybe this time will be different" more than moving to what would be the company's first non-Windows OS since the days of DOS.

It gives you an automatic excuse for any incompatibilities that pop up, and you get to claim "compatible with most of your Windows applications!" like it's some sort of novel thing. It gives you license (and imperative) to drop decade-old Windows UI conventions in favor of something better. But most importantly, it gives every potential customer in the world hope. Hope that the next operating system won't do any of the bad things they don't like about their current one. It's going to be ten times harder to convince people of that if the next OS, regardless of what it is, carries the Windows name.