http://www.slashfilm.com/2009/11/11/lol-now-that-dollhouse-is-cancelled-fox-to-become-the-seth-macfarlane-network/

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Win.

And I still insist those ads with Kylie are friggin’ adorable and totally win me over- if I had the money, I’d try it out, since I’m probably less apt with computers and software than the average kid her age. I mean, come on. I think Vista is great, and I know I shouldn’t.

At any rate, Genevieve, you’re probably right that they’re not actually losing money due to this PR fiasco or the inane marketing videos for the same product. But I do believe that they’re missing out on lots of potential gains.

There’s no skirting around the fact that Microsoft has a larger market share currently than they ever have before. They’re currently at their all-time high position on the Fortune 500 list, and Bill Gates, even having retired as chief software architect and CEO, has regained his position as the wealthiest man in the world. (Side note: I was trying to look up when he first ascended to that position, but came up dry. Anyone happen to know?)

Still, I can’t help but feel like, with some decent marketing, some copywriters who know what they’re doing, and some kind of output that shows they have some idea of where the public zeitgeist is at vis-a-vis computers, they could be preventing some of their inevitable market-share loss to Apple — and maybe even taking some of those customers back.

But hey, it’s their billions to lose.

Also, am I the only one who, in thoughts, occasionally confuses Seth MacFarlane and Todd McFarlane, *with hilarious results*??

@ Lee & Jon Eric – I’m willing to bet that at least a part of the reason that Microsoft screws up so gloriously at times is that they just Don’t Care. That is, c’mon. Are they really going to lose money because of any of this? They could dance around in S.S. costumes whistling Dixie and still have more money in one share of stock than I have in my bank account. I mean, I guess someone has some oversight, if they realized they didn’t want to do the Family Guy thing after all… but they don’t seem particularly worried about the fallout at this point. They’re just acting like, “Whatever guys, we screwed up, but we’re rich, and it’s not like the whole world is going to run out an learn Linux, so suck it up already!”

Let me throw another example of Microsoft marketing fail. You may have seen this literal white-washing of an image of office workers for their Polish website:

http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/2009/08/microsoft-poland-at-least-they-left.html

Further proof that Microsoft makes huge gaffes despite its largess.

If I had to Overthink and dissect why MS keeps failing in marketing where Apple doesn’t, I’d have to point to two related factors: size and scope.

Size: measured by July-Sept 09 quarterly revenue, MS is about 30% larger than Apple. A larger company is inherently more difficult to keep on message…

Scope: …especially when its activity is spread across a vast array of software and hardware products. The same company that makes SQL Server and Sharepoint (hardcore enterprise software) also makes the Zune, Hotmail, and Bing. Apple, by comparison, has a wide range of products as well (Mac Pro, XServe, and hard core creative software on one end, iTunes and the App Store on the other end), but they seem to fit together better as a universe of personal computing products.

Plus, Steve Jobs is a merciless control freak and perfectionist who would feed to the dogs any marketing person who came up with anything that wound up getting lampooned like the Windows 7 launch party video.

As for Microsoft… yeesh. Personally, I think my advertising campaign would have a John Hodgman look-alike sitting down and saying “Look, I’m a PC. I’m not the hippest thing on the market, but I am a freaking work horse. I will get your job done FAST. And I’ll do it for a lot less money.”

First off, I forgot to sign my previous post properly. Oops.

Second of all, when calculating Microsoft’s mean Fortune 500 ranking of the decade, I forgot to include its 2009 ranking (35, an all-time high for the company). That drags the decade’s average down to 54.5.

But what motivated them to make such a decision? Where did the system go so horribly awry that such a thing could happen? In fact, as far as I know, nobody was even fired over this. MacFarlane’s motivation isn’t too hard to suss out (think back to Stephen Colbert at the White House Press Correspondent’s Dinner), but what might this special have looked like?

Better yet, why not Overthink this by offering suggestions for a decent ad campaign for Microsoft? I mean, christ, look at that that “Windows 7 Party” video — I’d be willing to bet that most OverthinkingIt readers — let alone writers — would be able to put together a more professional-looking and more compelling (and therefore more convincing) ad for Windows 7 on virtually no budget. Yet Microsoft has got BILLIONS and can’t come up with a video that doesn’t look like something they’d show at your Driver’s Ed course.

So yeah. Major fail. But why not look at some of the causes underlying that fail, and figure out why they haven’t been fixed, even after a decade and a half of bungling ad campaigns and PR missteps by a company whose owner has been the wealthiest person in the world for 14 of the last 15 years, and whose average ranking in the Fortune 500 list this decade is 56.6?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssOq02DTTMU

For some reason, I wasn’t aware of the _Family Guy_ ad until reading your piece.