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 Before I moved over to the computer industry, back in the 1980s, I was Editor of What Hi-Fi? magazine. At the time, it was very apparent that I was leaving a mature industry for a much younger and more exciting world. Hi-fi was dominated by well-established corporations, mainly Japanese but some European. With little to distinguish the products of one manufacturer from another, marketing was largely a matter of brand differentiation and awareness. Only occasionally would something genuinely new appear, such as the Sony Walkman, however even these served primarily to differentiate their respective brands from the crowd.
Of course branding has always been significant in the computer industry. Witness Apple’s early success with the campaign that launched the Macintosh, positioning itself as the loan fighter against the corporate dominance of ‘Big Blue’ (as IBM was nicknamed) in a 1984-style world. Since then Apple has stuck true to the brand, to the extent that owning an iMac, an iPod an iPhone, or indeed anything that is white and boasts the Apple logo, is to make a statement about yourself and your lifestyle that goes way beyond the capabilities of the device itself. However not many other computer companies can claim the same success. Adobe perhaps, to the extent that (despite its best efforts) ‘Photoshop’ is widely used as a verb.
Strangely, the company that has arguably taken the place of Big Blue in dominating the industry landscape, namely Microsoft, has a patchy record at best with regards to brand awareness, and seems intent on destroying what little it has with its campaign for Windows 7. At best, it is being portrayed as ‘Vista done right (at last)’. At worst, we have the Windows 7 Launch Party video, encouraging you to register for a ‘free party package’ containing everything you need to throw a Tupperware-style party to celebrate the launch. Nobody could have been surprised when an edited version appeared on YouTube with all references to ‘Windows 7’ bleeped out, leaving just the suggestive banter of the party guests to hilarious effect.
This is a great shame because Microsoft has had strong branding successes in the past, helping to establish it both as an innovator and as a centre of technical excellence. Windows 3, for example, won acclaim in 1990 as the first operating system to take full advantage of the protected modes available with the Intel 80386 processor. Windows NT, released in 1993 and put together with the help of Dave Cutler, was widely seen as the first truly ‘grown up’ microcomputer operating system. More recently C# and the .NET Framework, designed by teams led by language guru Anders Hejlsberg, generated well-deserved excitement when unveiled in 2000. Others that come to mind include OpenXML, XAML and of course Silverlight.
Microsoft does seem to have done at least a competent job with Windows 7. It’s a shame the same can’t be said of its branding.
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