A hundred million mistakes

[Proclaimer]

http://goodexperience.com/2009/06/microsoft-has-a-probl.php

Microsoft has a problem. It's sitting on a cash hoard of what, 20 or 30 billion dollars, waiting to be invested somewhere – and meanwhile Google's influence keeps getting bigger, bigger, bigger. Not to mention all those Apple commercials still making fun of Windows.

Everything Microsoft has tried recently hasn't worked. They tried the “I'm a PC” ads, a knockoff of the Mac ads – didn't work. Tried the Zune, a knockoff of the iPod – didn't work. Tried redoing MSN Search again and again, as a knockoff of Google – didn't work. What's the world coming to, when Microsoft can't build a monopoly around a knockoff?

It's those effing customers. They keep choosing the best experience.

I have to imagine this is tough on Ballmer and whoever else over there. No matter what they try, the customers refuse to take orders from Redmond. Sure, lots of people still pay the upgrade tax on Windows and Office every two years, but only because they have to. There's no love.

So what does Microsoft do? They launch – I'm still reeling from this – they launch a search engine. To compete head-on with Google. In search. I just need to type that again: Microsoft wants to unseat Google with a search engine.

Now here's where it gets really nuts.

Microsoft's strategy, to win market share from Google, is not to compete on user experience. No. Microsoft's strategy is to advertise the heck out of the thing and hope people flock to the site.

They are spending – wait, let me try my best “Dr. Evil” voice – one hundred million dollars to order the world to use their search engine. According to a Microsoft exec in charge of the launch, “The key will be whether we deliver a product and connect with people emotionally in the advertising.” (See quote in the NYT piece.)

A hundred million dollars to “connect with people emotionally in the advertising.” If I've learned one thing in my customer experience work over 12 years, it's this: any online strategy built on emotional connection, based on flashy ads or a new font or color scheme on the website, is guaranteed to fail. Customers online don't respond to a brand marketed to them, they respond to the experience they have. If they can accomplish their goal quickly and easily, they return to the site, and tell their friends. It's that simple. And if one site already provides a good experience, then there's no need to consider switching to some other site, no matter what the company brags about itself in its ads.

I wish Microsoft would succeed – I'd love to see them excel at something new, really establish themselves as a leader in some new venture – but this isn't it. So I have some suggestions.

Here's what Microsoft could buy with a hundred million dollars:

• ownership stakes in one hundred startup companies working on new ideas, in areas not dominated by Google. (See Internet Week NY or Tech Meetups in NYC or Silicon Valley for several dozen ideas right now.)

• two thousand years of innovation and entrepreneurship by paying $50,000 annually to a thousand entrepreneurs to work for two years and share IP rights with their results (the MIT Media Lab model, roughly).

• a solar power grid to cut Microsoft's carbon footprint by 30%, show that the company is serious about going green, and save on operating costs (the approach of Google – copying them here would be a good thing!)

• or a bunch of TV ads and promos for a knockoff search engine.

Microsoft is making an enormous bet on the how the world used to work, and I can't help but think they're on the wrong side of history. They're apparently hoping that a top-down, big-media, command-and-control approach will ram this brand down enough consumers' throats that people will just feel obligated to switch from fast, easy, well-known Google to a new brand they saw chatted up like a new blockbuster movie.

That's just not how the Internet works, and Microsoft should know better.

This all reminds me of the humbling experience of another big company, about twenty years back, when an innovative leader disrupted its model. When IBM was fading, it was Microsoft that took the lead.

[Author]

Posts