Ninjas Black and Blue
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Reporter's Notebook: Repeatedly I asked myself yesterday: Is Microsoft making the same marketing mistakes with its new server software as Windows Vista? |
Microsoft's Heroes Happen {here} event, which launched 2008 versions of SQL Server, Visual Studio and Windows Server, was subdued compared to Windows Vista's kick-off. But the glitzy marketing was still way over the top, for which benefits are questionable.
CEO Steve Ballmer's keynote, in the Nokia Theater, had all the glitz of a Las Vegas act—aging performers illuminated in laser light glory. That said, Ballmer was in good form on the stage. His delivery wasn't aspirational, but it was polished and all business. Ballmer may yet be Microsoft's best front man for the enterprise.
Microsoft claimed more than 3,000 attendees—and I believe it. I sat in the back balcony area for a view of Ballmer and the crowd. For the number of attendees and view of them from the stage, Ballmer should have felt like the performer. The audience of developers and IT professionals were his people.
I got a little chuckle over the Nokia Theater as keynote venue. After all, Nokia competes with Windows Mobile—and there were loads of cool Nokia cell phones on display in the main lobby area—including the N95 model I used to tape audio and video podcasts.
Outside Nokia Theater and in and around the Los Angeles Convention Center, Microsoft makes prolific use of "{ }," which surrounded words everywhere. Curly brackets are intriguing marketing metaphors. Developers easily can associate with their use, and the brackets are uncommon in marketing. Meaning: There is familiarity to the target audience, yet the symbols stand out for their uniqueness.
But Microsoft overused { }. In one men's bathroom, curly brackets covered the mirrors. Too much of a good thing is simply too much, which diminishes the marketing value.
There was too much elsewhere, and some stuff's marketing and purchase value I questioned. Microsoft flushed a lot of Windows Vista marketing dollars down a black hole of glitz and one-time stunts of marginal value. Were no lessons learned from Vista's launch marketing?
A blue carpet marked the way from the Nokia Theater to the convention center. My first reaction: Why isn't the carpet red? The second: Why is there any carpet? Men and women dressed in blue and white flanked either side of the carpet, holding up banners that attendees walked under. Huh?
I suppose, the banners were meant to be consistent with Microsoft's launch theme: Developers and IT professionals as heroes. That's actually a good concept, of raising up the customers by acknowledging their hard work. But why raise up banners over them? To honor them? Wouldn't they rather walk down a red carpet then?
By far, the ninjas were the most puzzling part of the morning's launch gala. Men and women clothed head to toe in blue-and-black outfits carried around an orange thingy. The color matched the curly brackets, but didn't resemble them. If there was a symbol or metaphor in the ninjas, I didn't get it.
But I sure wondered what the ninjas, banner carriers, blue carpet and all those curly brackets cost. The more important question: What's the value? If show attendees felt the love, so to speak, they might go back and evangelize Microsoft products. That would be a good result. But ninjas—and not particularly good ones? The ninjas weren't exactly carrying swords but the orange thingy.
Fortunately, the ninjas were a fleeting part of the marketing. Microsoft's mascot—or perhaps main server software spokesperson—will be a robot made of up of servers. Mmmm. Will that be much better?
Microsoft plans to hold hundreds of Heroes Happen {here} events around the world. Yesterday's launch gala was just the first. The company also plans massive marketing, but in some ways subdued, as there is nothing planned for broadcast—unlike Windows Server 2003 marketing.
The Internet is the main reason. "With the advent of the Internet, we can actually splice and talk to people in a way that makes sense to them," Bob Visse, Windows Server marketing director, told me yesterday.
Microsoft also views the Internet as more effective than television as a way of reaching enterprise customers.
"More and more people, particularly the IT pros, they really consume more of their media online than they ever have before," Visse said. "The world has changed as far as media consumption. So we have to snap to a whole new way of interacting with our customers."
But does a whole new way have to be black and blue ninjas, blue carpets and curly brackets?
Related Posts:
- Are Vista and Windows Server Better Together?, Microsoft Watch, Feb. 27, 2008
- Server Launch: Too Many Missing Pieces, Microsoft Watch, Feb. 27, 2008
Comments (2)
It cannot be worse than the "Its better with the butterfly" campaign. For a company that is supposed to be great at marketing, they seem to have a lot of blunders.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2003/dec03/12-30butterfly2004pr.mspx
There is one common theme though - people in tight lycra costumes. Maybe a Ballmer fetish?
The Zune marketing was fairly lame but this takes it to new levels of pointlessness.
Posted by billybob | February 28, 2008 7:20 PM
Joe;
Yet another dumb marketing idea by Microsoft. Next someone will resurrect Microsoft Bob (aka Steve Ballmer cartoon character). Or some sort of hologramic image or display with Bill Gates in a see all, do all type of Campaign that will remind everyone that the Antichrist is afoot.
Black Jackboots and black soldier like uniforms and hats that will remind anyone of the rise of the American fascist armed with high voltage "hotsticks" in their leathered black gloves and wearing MS approved smoked reflective glasses where the women have more attributes of a man than a 12 year old boy does... But you, my friend, you are not discuraged and continue being processed through the long lines heading into the convention center.
There on high, a colorful banner waving in the fresh morning air ever so gently. You take notice of the slogan, "Heroes Start Here..." and you begin to fight off the feeling that it's true -- so true...
You wonder if Madonna will be here, come to sing a new song, a jingle that will ease everyone visiting the "Microsoft Dog and Pony Show" into an audio and visual mind numbing coma. Then we can have the fourth branch of government gathering at the door with their cameras, lights and a blonde in a red business suite carrying a microphone struggling to get comments. "Hey, I might get on the news..." A fleeting though comes across your mind, "Wow, my friends in Ord Nebraska could only see me know." As soon as you said it, you catch yourself in false humility.
You eventually make it to the doors, you find yourself gasping and realizing this, you think of the last time you gasped in such a way -- It was when you were sixteen and a well figured woman bent down before you picking up some change on the floor and you looked down her dress at her supple...
Oh let's not forget the free software bundles at the door given by slender young women smiling through overdone makeup and drug-induced static smiles and eyes frosted over with the hype that they were told and believe to be gospel.
Clammy handshakes and heartless greetings as you walk in with your bundle of "free software" that you will go through when you are being seated and the atmosphere that you are in the midst of some sort of greatness that seems almost spiritual as come to the conclusion of the dementia, the deception of grandeur in the auditorium. On stage, you see the multi-screen plasma displays and more guards, I mean MS staff ushering people to their seats.
You can't help but notice those folks that has never been to a MS event, for they have the look of a small farm boy looking up and becoming intoxicated by the "big city lights." Heck, you were the same way, that is, once upon a time...
Oh yes, you sit down in your seat and stave off the tide of the overwhelming ebb of excitement, for you do not want to have the look akin to a doe caught in the lights of an oncoming Semi -- Heaven forbid!
You distract yourself and look at your bundled software, their hologramic colorful looking DVDs of Office 2007, Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, and a couple of others that you know that you will post on your favorite Torrent Site so everyone can benefit freely of your great achievement -- Your at the epicenter of the best Microsoft has to offer and then it strikes you, "No way, I am keeping these wonderful programs to myself!"
Rightly so, your pilgrimage that started in Iowa has taken you to the West Coast, the cost, separating yourself from your family and friends, your poor friends who had better things to do, so they say, that couldn't make it. You feel a wave of condemnation for your "idiot" friends that didn't make it, a sense of, "I am so much better than they are anyways..." comes over you.
After all, you paid for your room and board, transportation to and fro -- You deserve this, it's owed to you and now you are reaping the rewards of your journey, your trek to Mecca -- I mean, a Microsoft convention.
As you gloat over this, your eyes water still looking at the shimmering DVDs that reflect in your eyes of shear wonderment that you hold in your hands. In your self-absorbed thoughts, deep down inside, you know that you are a part of the Microsoft way of life, a theology, a winning theology of knowing you're a part of the best in the American society that has to offer.
Yes, yes, my man, it's all about being the best and as you look down, out of your peripheral site, you make out the Windows embroidered logo on your black golf-tee fortifying that your with a room full of winners, and after all, you are a winner.
You ease back into your seat knowing, wait, believing this as you are about to get the "inside scoop" of the brilliance of Microsoft's cutting edge and the fantastic cooperate war plan about to unfold before your eyes.
People begin to fire up their laptops, palm pilots, digital cameras as the lights begin to dim and a hush swoons over the audience as the first of the keynote speakers comes to the stage...
Posted by Douglas S. Taylor | February 29, 2008 1:45 PM