Comments on: Microsoft Asks Employees to Spam Friends and Family

By: Scott

Scott — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 11:48:43 +0000

All I have to say on this issue is that none of the Fortune 500 companies I’ve worked for in the past 20 years has ever requested that I send e-mail to my friends about one of their products.

If I suddenly got a marketing pitch via e-mail from a friend; I’d probably assume my friend’s e-mail address had been harvested spammers or their computer had been compromised, was now part of a botnet and being used to send spam.

By: Susan Gunelius

Susan Gunelius — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 15:29:04 +0000

I think from a marketing perspective, we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one, Brianne.

By: Brianne

Brianne — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 15:13:25 +0000

No, I don’t work for Miscrosoft, I only feel that your use of the work “spam” is inappropriate and to say that push marketing is past it’s prime at the expense of Microsoft when it’s alive and well for hunderds of other companies is unfair.

I would agree that Microsoft marketing can be heavy-handed at times, but you’ll find that viral marketing and guerilla grass roots campaigns apply much more to smaller companies or underdogs than to large established companies. If you can identify what they are doing wrong, you hsould also be able to make a positive recommendation for improvement.

Also, to compare Apple to Microsoft is apples to oranges. Apple is an end-to-end niche shop and Microsoft is a widely used operating system and software platform. That would be like comparing Hot Topic to Amazon.com.

By: Susan Gunelius

Susan Gunelius — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 01:03:44 +0000

No matter how you try to rephrase it, “send this to 10 of your friends,” sounds like spam to me. In the book I’m writing right now, I do talk about the Microsoft brand in comparison to Apple and some of its other competitors. The key is building relationships through pull marketing and allowing consumers to take control. Push marketing tactics are what’s passe, particularly as it applies to email. That’s exactly what Alan Siegel and I discussed in the interview that I referenced above. Consumers are bored of corporate rhetoric, and filling in boxes with more of it is not going to get the job done anymore. The fact that Microsoft’s brand is in the decline stage with no sign of near-term turnaround further demonstrates that point.

Here is another example just from this month: http://gawker.com/5130701/microsoft-ad-and-product-advertised-could-both-conceivably-make-you-want-to-kill-your-family

And another from this month: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/28/axe_the_zune/

Just curious why you’re defending Microsoft so strongly, Brianne. That might help me gain better insight on your position in the debate What aspects of the tactic do you think are effective in repositioning Microsoft in relation to its current placement in the brand lifecycle? Do you disagree that developing societal brands and relationships is more effective in leveraging the social web and building internal brand ambassadors than push marketing? Microsoft has fallen into the classic trap that so many pioneer brands have been guilty of before them. Do you disagree? How then do you explain the market share shift? I don’t want to keep disagreeing just to disagree. I’d like to get a better understanding of your side of the debate.

By: Brianne

Brianne — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 22:00:48 +0000

So it would be more widely recieved if it were a “send 10 postcards” to your friends campaign or a “looks like it’s released key information too early” PR release curculated amongst key technology or business bloggers like yourselves? Is the bottom line that email marketing through employees is passe?

Is it the message or the medium that is being criticised? Why not say that an email had bad-cookie cutter-corporate copy instead of saying that it was spam?

What would you recommend from your experience that Microsoft do instead next time the opportunity arises to beta test a highly anticipated product with a tough competitor?