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How vomit lady shows what's going wrong with Microsoft

Microsoft's obsession with its image is leading to a series of advertising missteps - and a conversation with Windows boss Bill Veghte suggests that has no signs of changing yet

Microsoft has been trying very hard to change its public image in recent months, spending millions on flashy new advertising campaigns. It's important to the company to reinvent itself for users - particularly with the launch of Windows 7 just a few months away.

Despite the big budgets and desire to succeed, however, things have proved tricky. In terms of the image the company's trying to broadcast to the world, it has flipped wildly from one extreme to another: one minute it's all about smart kids using Windows PCs and the next, it's about vomiting women.

Looking from the outside, it looks like Microsoft's confused. It's behaving erratically. Put it this way: if Microsoft were a friend of yours, you'd probably be taking it out for a drink, leaning over your pint and checking that it was OK. You'd be asking: what exactly is going on?

Last week I was able to get a little more insight into the company's thinking at a journalist's lunch with Bill Veghte, the senior vice president of Windows at Microsoft. That's a big job, running the core business for the world's most powerful software corp, and he's one of the crucial executives.

We discussed a variety of topics – Windows 7 among them – and asked a lot of questions about Microsoft's approach, strategy and attitudes. Veghte seems like a nice chap, but was (as you would expect from a seasoned corporate executive) very controlled in what he said.

He told us that part of how they came to think about changing Windows 7 was from user feedback and focus groups. They realised people had lost touch with Windows; that they needed to put back some of the magic into things; that there was a lot at stake, and that Microsoft had to work hard to keep its customers.

Will Windows 7 be an improvement on Vista?

"I hope so, I hope so. Certainly, the feedback we've got from the beta release - and we're not done yet," he said. "Will there some day be a release that's better than Windows 7? I hope so... that's the nature of innovation... the market's efficient. If you don't move the ball forward, and we haven't simplified and added a new set of capabilities, they won't go."

He discussed the criticism of Vista ("we take it personally") and argued that the negative perception of Microsoft in the press wasn't representative of how the world viewed its products: "We're in an echo chamber of about 10 million people," he said. "But get out there, and Windows is the thing that lets me do the web... there's a clear opportunity globally."

"For customers globally, Windows is one of the top five or six brands in the world," he said, and one of the most favourably received. The problem for Microsoft wasn't that products like Vista were bad, it's that the company wasn't telling its story well enough (creating what he called an "amplification opportunity").

Through all of it, that idea - of amplification - was central: this is something Microsoft clearly sees as a marketing problem, which is why it's been throwing money at advertising agencies and marketing gurus to move itself forward.

In truth though, it seems that Microsoft still isn't sure what story it wants to amplify. Microsoft wants a new identity, but it doesn't know what that identity is.

Look at its various advertising campaigns of late (and there are plenty of them to pick from). The Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld spots were painful, while the "I'm a PC" adverts were, I thought, pretty good. The Laptop Hunter ads got people talking, if not always for the right reasons, and the Rookies ads won awards. The Dean Cain ads? Well, when I look at them, I'm not left disgusted (unlike those whose complaints got the vomiting ad pulled) - just nonplussed. It's too cynical, it tries too hard. Stilted and weird can be funny, but sometimes it's just, well, stilted and weird.

This scattergun approach isn't enhancing Microsoft's reputation - it's slowly chipping away at it; making it look more and more like a disco dancing dad who's trying to look cool.

This "everything's OK, we just need to have better ads" approach is a classic big corporation move, and one that is very hard to pull off - since big corporation's ambitions usually appear to be more about sales than helping the customer.

Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land put it really well a while back in a talk called Tough Love For Microsoft Search, when he argued that Microsoft's strategy in the search market isn't really a strategy at all - it's merely a desire to make money that has been dressed up.

Just because you're Microsoft doesn't mean that you have some type of manifest destiny to receive it. In particular, it's a terrible signal to tell the world that this is a primary reason you're doing search, to grab some of the advertising cash away from Google. It would be like Apple trying to sell Macs by telling the world too much money is being spent on Windows PCs.


That message carries across the whole business. Don't just tell us you want our money. Tell us you believe in something.

In truth, Microsoft - and Veghte himself - believe in a lot of things. They believe that Windows 7 is the product we've all been waiting for. They believe they've got it right this time and that they just need to tell a better story.

But the message they're sending out doesn't match up. When you look for answers, for products, for passion, they're talking about amplification and telling a better story. If Vomiting Lady tells them anything, it should be that ironic poses and quirky humour aren't the same as character... and that the best way of appearing to be genuine is simple: be genuine in the first place.

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