How Microsoft Blogging PR Works

I had my first dealings with Microsoft PR in 1994, when I worked as technology editor for a life insurance trade magazine. In those days, Microsoft PR aggressively courted eWEEK (which had a different name then) and other high-tech "trade" news organizations. The trades' influence meant much to Microsoft. Most of the communication came from PR agency Waggener Edstrom, for which shorthand is Wagged.

The PR mechanisms would remain pretty much the same through the early part of the 21st century. However, Microsoft would spread its accounts among other PR agencies, primarily Edelman and Webber Shandwick. While Wagged would remain the main PR agency, the additional agencies created competition for account business—and not always in Microsoft's best interests. For example, Edelman scored a big coup in the early 2000s by wooing MacBU (Macintosh Business Unit) PR from Wagged. Edelman also handled PR for Windows Vista's launch, rather than Wagged, which is the main account holder for the Windows client business.

The spreading of accounts across agencies and competition among them created some confusion with respect to lines of authority and who disseminated what, particularly during a PR crisis. Microsoft would sometimes find itself in the situation of releasing conflicting or contradictory information, and no blame is meant in that assertion. Microsoft's size and success—the way its products touch almost everyone—puts a magnifying glass on the company's behavior. One snippet of a Microsoft executive's public comment could set off a chain reaction of news stories about when Product A might or might not ship. From PR's perspective, such a situation is a crisis.

Something else: Microsoft's U.S. antitrust case forever changed how the company handles outside communications, particularly public relations. Aggressive, competitive lobbying efforts helped precipitate the antitrust case. The Justice Department's outside legal team, and some state attorneys general, effectively leaked information during the trial that put Microsoft in a negative public spotlight. Microsoft later responded by abandoning its outsider status, establishing a Washington lobbying effort and putting more spin on its PR communications.

Bloggers created a new problem in the early 2000s. Suddenly, Microsoft no longer contended with just the news media. Bloggers worked outside the comfortable and familiar news channels, adding unpredictability to the PR communications process.

A Blog By Any Other Name Is Still PR
Blogging also created an unexpected PR opportunity to control the message outside traditional news media channels. Around the same time as blogging started to really catch on, Microsoft's evangelist group hired Robert Scoble, who already was a prolific blogger, to blog about Microsoft. Scoble wasn't the only Microsoft evangelist blogger, but he stood out for his freshness, frankness and willingness to criticize his employer.

Microsoft PR may have observed an interesting and hugely beneficial practice: While most reputable journalists would rarely, or never, quote a press release, they would quote from blog posts. Scoble was widely quoted by the news media. That practice, which maybe the news media should reconsider, opened up an exciting new PR channel for Microsoft.

Related: In Spring 2004, Microsoft's evangelist team launched the Channel 9 video blog. Microsoft gave Channel 9 unprecedented access to product managers and major executives, including Chairman Bill Gates. Microsoft employees interviewed Microsoft employees and disseminated the videos on a Microsoft Web site. Microsoft had discovered a means for controlling the message, of going around the sometimes troublesome news media. Good journalists do independent reporting. Channel 9 had no such constraints.

Meanwhile, more Microsoft employees started to blog, some motivated to gain Scoble-like success, others for their customers and partners and still others as part of a coordinated PR effort. That news organizations would quote Microsoft bloggers as real people created another channel for disseminating information in a way that the company could better control.

It's quite common now for Microsoft to make major product announcements via blogs, and it's not uncommon for the posts to be the only communication--no press release. With close to 5,000 employee bloggers, I'd argue that blogs are now Microsoft's major communications vehicle for reaching pretty much everybody.

Employees are certainly a group over which Microsoft can exact some control and that can spin information to the company's advantage. Many of the employee blogs are PR. They are Microsoft spin.

Yesterday's blog post by Nate Clinton, Windows Update program manger, is an example of the coordinated PR-blogging effort. Microsoft provided three paragraphs of comments for our follow-up story on the Windows Update controversy. The comments appeared almost word-for-word in Clinton's post; we received those comments before the blog posted.

The Windows Update Backstory
The process leading to Clinton's post reveals something about how Microsoft uses blogs to control information dissemination.

Windows Secrets contacted eWEEK and Microsoft Watch about its Windows Update discovery on Tuesday afternoon. Testing showed that Windows Update self-updated even when the mechanism was set by the end user to manually install updates. After eWEEK Labs confirmed Windows Secrets' findings, we made several attempts to contact Wagged for Microsoft response. As it turned out, we left voice mail for one PR rep who turned out to be in a meeting. We later spoke with someone else, who promised to refer the matter. Hours later, we finally got a phone call from someone else at Wagged, with promise of formal Microsoft response in about 30 minutes. By coincidence, or not, the Microsoft Watch story posted five minutes before the response.

Later, and well beyond 30 minutes, the same Wagged PR rep e-mailed to say that Microsoft comment wouldn't come until Thursday morning. At 12:18 p.m. EDT on Thursday, we received Microsoft's three-paragraph response and e-mailed back: "Thanks for the comments. Would Microsoft be amicable to an interview?"

About a half hour later we got the response, "At this point, we can engage an email Q&A if you'd like," with explanation that the appropriate people were "busy troubleshooting." We requested yet another interview: "This is too important a topic to do e-mail Q&A. I would encourage you to get someone on the phone."

Based on the comments, we posted a follow-up story at 2:09 p.m. EDT. We received another response from Wagged at 2:25 p.m. EDT: "Thank you for your feedback. No one is available to chat with you right now, but this blog posting might provide you with additional information." Wagged provided a link to the aforementioned Clinton blog post.

Microsoft's PR objectives are clear:

• To disseminate information through a blog the company controls.
• To give the impression of a personal, rather than a coordinated-PR, response.
• To avoid answering tough questions the news media might ask about privacy and Windows Update

Blogs Put the Filters On
I don't fault Microsoft for its behavior, or pass judgment. The role of PR is to manage public relations, by any means. The PR people are just doing what Microsoft pays them to do. Microsoft employees work with PR professionals the company pays to help them. Lots of companies employ PR professionals.

However, Microsoft engages in a far more concerted PR-through-blogging effort than perhaps any other technology company. The news media is partly to blame for the situation, by freely quoting Microsoft and other company bloggers. The news media should be more insistent on engaging real people, rather than blogs or e-mail questions and responses.

Microsoft employee blogs aren't just casual conversations with customers and partners. Many of them are crafted with a clear PR agenda in mind. The Windows Update post is a good example. Recently, I asked Microsoft for comment about Software Assurance. Portions of the comments later appeared, almost verbatim, in a Microsoft Q&A about Software Assurance.

The point: Microsoft customers and partners and the news media should do more filtering and analysis of the company's communications, particularly employee blogs. Many of the blogs are not as unfiltered as they might seem. Microsoft isn't alone in this practice. For example, Adobe, IBM and Sun blogs clearly have some PR objective. Microsoft stands above the rest, in part because of the sheer number of employee bloggers.

That said, the blogs serve an important role beyond PR. Blogging forces some Microsoft managers to think more about marketing at earlier stages in product development. The blogs also create new touch points to various product groups that would have been unreachable a decade ago. The extent of this outreach benefits customers and partners, too, and circumvents some of the filters applied by the news media.

I would suggest that Microsoft customers and partners apply appropriate filters on the news media, too. But judging from Microsoft Watch comments, there already is plenty of filtering going on there.

Related Posts:

• Windows Updates' Perception Problem, Microsoft Watch, September, 13, 2007
• Windows Updates' Sneaky Updates, Microsoft Watch, September 12, 2007
• Microsoft's Top 10 Reasons Not to GAPE, Microsoft Watch, September 11, 2007
• Will Microsoft's Katrina Goodwill Go Bad?, Microsoft Watch, August 28, 2007
• Microsoft's Open Letter to Open Source, Microsoft Watch, May 14, 2007
• Patch Tuesday: Security or PR?, Microsoft Watch, April 10, 2007
• Channel 9 Unwired, Microsoft Watch, March 30, 2007
• How's the Reception at Channel 9, Microsoft Watch, March 29, 2007