"New Microsoft" Teaches How Not to Position Your Company
Want to learn how to position your company? Let's start with a lesson in what not to do, courtesy of Microsoft.
We all know that Microsoft dominates desktop software. Mainly because it owns the operating system and office productivity market.
But Apple's biting into its dominance with sexy (and stable) music players, phones and computers.
To help, Apple has repositioned Microsoft as stuffy, lame and hapless. All business and no play.
In response, Microsoft has begun its long-awaited $300 million Jerry Seinfeld campaign to defend itself from accusations of lameness.
But rather than improve Microsoft's prospects, these ads will only confuse consumers and undermine Microsoft's core positioning.
Master Your Domain
For those unfamiliar with the term, "positioning" refers to the psychological space your brand owns in the mind of consumers.
For example, Coke is the real thing while Pepsi is the choice of the new generation. Coke's position: classic. Pepsi's: new and hip.
The positioning is so essential to each brand's success that when Coke tried to steal Pepsi's positioning with New Coke, it resulted in one of the biggest marketing failures in history.
If you're starting or building a business, you want to define and dominate a position in the mind of consumers.
Maybe that position is "high quality." Maybe it's "low price."
Regardless, you must stake out your territory and claim it with clarity.
Ads About Nothing, Results to Match
Unless we're missing something, however, Microsoft appears to have committed a similar sin to New Coke.
In the mind of Microsoft's key consumers, the company does one thing well: business software.
Most IT managers and purchasers choose Microsoft software for stability and compatibility (even if this reputation is undeserved).
The position: (mostly) reliable business software.
Few IT managers are willing to switch to Mac-based or Linux-based infrastructures, at the very least due to the risk of the unknown.
Microsoft will never have Apple's reputation for usability and design. Just as Apple will never have Microsoft's reputation for back-end office systems.
That's why Apple has staked out a different position. The "Think Different" position that implicitly makes it the outsider and underdog.
To attract people who don't consider themselves cubicle-dwellers.
With its latest ads, about nothing, Microsoft is trying to reposition itself as oddball, quirky and eccentric, apparently to battle the stuffy stereotype.
Unfortunately, its core users want stuffy.
What You Can Learn from (Likely) Failure
What's the deal with Microsoft?
The people who buy its software are often very much the lame suit-wearing number crunchers that Apple disparages.
Microsoft should be strengthening its position in this market, reclaiming the stuffy image as positive.
Who do you want managing your data? Your designer, or the CIO in the suit and tie?
Instead, Microsoft got sucked into a position it can't and shouldn't defend.
Meanwhile, Google is about to erode its share of the office productivity market with online business applications.
The big lesson if you're starting a business?
It's not about you.
Almost certainly, Bill Gates' personal offense at Apple's ads catalyzed the misguided response.
If he had only paid attention to his key customers, and what they wanted (more stability, not oddball eccentricity), Microsoft could have used this opening to further solidify its grip on the business market. It could have, for example, repositioned Apple as great for "creative" people but terrible for mission-critical applications required to keep business on track.
As hard as it is to separate ego from business, we all must do our best to avoid the same mistake.
Pick the right position based on your market, not your personal preference.
After all, when's the last time you bought a case of New Coke?
By Simon on Sun., Sep. 07, 2008 @07:24 PM
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In addition Seinfeld is so-o 1998. And about nothing, too.