Corporate Eye

...compare, compete, excel

Lucy Nixon

Lucy Nixon

Is Microsoft’s Brand Strategy Poised to Fail Again?

Last month, I wrote a post called Microsoft – A Case Study in Failing to Meet Customer Expectations where I discussed three of the main reasons that Windows Vista failed and Microsoft’s brand reputation has been less than stellar in recent years.  Each reason related to failing to meet customer expectations, one of the most important things successful brands must do.  Today, I read an article on The Register demonstrating that Microsoft still hasn’t seen the light.

At Microsoft’s worldwide partner conference this week, Microsoft’s vice president of Windows consumer product marketing, Brad Brooks, blamed much of the tarnished reputation of the Microsoft and Windows Vista brands on Apple and the “lies” told in the popular Mac vs. PC Guy commercials.  According to The Register, Brooks said during his speech at the conference, “Today we are making a statement and drawing a line right here that we are going to do things differently. That we are going to tell our story.”  Notice there was no mention of failing to meet customer expectations with Windows Vista.  Instead, he simply stated that, “WindowsVista is a good product.” [Read more…] about Is Microsoft’s Brand Strategy Poised to Fail Again?

How to identify the focus of your strategy

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could see at a glance how your strategy explanation is going to come across?

Wordle is a clever tool which displays words from a piece of text in different sizes depending on their frequency in an image. Just for fun, I’ve run the text that summarises the strategies of BP and Shell on their respective websites through this tool, and come up with the following images …

BP Strategy
Shell Strategy

Although they are quite attractive images in their own right, this does let us see quite clearly the differences between the two.

The most important words in the Shell image are:

Shell, new, billion, resources, capacity, increase, year

The most important in the BP image are:

performance, people, operate, restoring, close, gap

Without even needing to read the text, we can see that there is a difference in focus between these two companies. For Shell, it is all about increases in capacity; for BP it is all about people and performance.

Note that although the biggest single word for Shell is ‘Shell’, and for BP, their name is one of the smallest words in the image, this is probably due to the way that they have phrased their text. I stripped out people’s names, but not the names of the companies. And I’m not claiming that this is a piece of detailed analytic work – but I do think that it reveals what the main messages of your text are, based on the words used.

If you ran your strategy statement through the same tool, what would the main focus look like? And is it what you intended?

The United Nations Global Compact Gets Tough

“And what’s this?” asks a bemused Olympics commentator as the middle distance race enters its final lap. “I don’t believe it … I really don’t believe it!” and the slightest trace of a giggle enters her voice.

For round the track, overtaking all the runners, comes an athletic, well-muscled figure dressed in a baggy red suit with white fur trimmed collar and cuffs and holding a curvy bottle of a bestselling sugar-based fizzy drink.

“Yes indeed,” concludes the commentator, “Santa really has been working out! No more fat and flabby; no more shaggy beard. He’s fit and lean and ready to take on the World!”

When it comes to previously slow and cumbersome figures starting to show a little zing in their activities, the United Nations being tough with miscreants isn’t too far off the fantasy of a fit and active Santa.
[Read more…] about The United Nations Global Compact Gets Tough

Twitter: Intel takes on a new recruitment agency

How about this for a great new way of seeking a new hire?

Intel use TwitterIntel

Yesterday Intel put their first job up on their Twitter account JobsatIntel. If you were looking for someone with an interest in the web, whether technical or design, or someone interested in social networking, or even just someone who is likely to be au fait with the latest tools and feeds, you couldn’t do better than to post a mini-ad on Twitter.

Once here, it is likely to be picked up and passed around to people working in, or with an interest in, this area. This job is for a Graphics Validation Engineer. I don’t know what the job entails, but this may be the quickest way of getting the job description under the nose of someone suitable.

That is because it is quick and free, it capitalises on people’s willingness to do a favour for a friend (especially at no cost) and pass this on to them if they think it relevant, and it puts the job ad where the target market is – on the web, and well-connected.

I notice that Intel’s Twitter account has 22 people signed up to receive their Tweets, even though it has only been there a day. That is 22 people already who may act as recruiting agents on Intel’s behalf, at no cost.

You’ve got to love Intel’s ability to use the web to their advantage.

Mozilla Firefox Sets Guinness World Record

On June 2nd, I published a post called Mozilla’s Firefox as a Relationship Brand where I discussed how Firefox has become a perfect example of a brand whose success relies heavily on its relationship with loyal customers.  I also mentioned that Mozilla was leveraging that relationship with its customers with Firefox 3 Download Day where the company asked customers to help set a Guinness World Record for the most downloads of a software program within 24 hours.  The official results are in and a new world record was, in fact, set. 

Can you guess how many downloads of Firefox 3 occurred between 18:16 UTC on June 17, 2008 to 18:16 UTC on June 18, 2008? [Read more…] about Mozilla Firefox Sets Guinness World Record

Can Your Brand Be Replaced?

Last week, I asked Does Your Brand Matter? where I talked about the tombstone test and asked you to analyze your brand and determine whether anyone would care if your brand disappeared tomorrow.  Today, I have another extension of that test with this question:

If you replaced your logo on your advertising, marketing materials, website, etc. with your competitor’s logo, would the message still apply for that other company?

This test is meant to show you whether your messages (particularly your brand messages) are too generic.  If another company’s logo could sit on your ad and the message would still work perfectly, then your brand message is not unique enough.

An important part of branding is differentiating your business or product from the myriad of others available on the marketplace and to make your brand stand out from the crowd.  If your message would work just as well with another company’s name and logo attached to it, then you need to go back to the drawing board.

Talk to your best customers and find out what it is about your brand that makes them choose it over all others.  That’s the message you want to communicate, and that’s the message that will differentiate your brand.