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Microsoft Spending $120M To Look Smaller
Ant writes "Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that Microsoft Corp. will spend $120 million a year on an advertising campaign to fight its image as "a huge American company." That sound you heard while reading the article is my head exploding.
Doesn't sound much different from what Wal-Mart has been trying to do in recent years. And Microsoft actually looks small compared to them.
Only an American company would spend this much to not look American.
Microsoft is always at the end of every computer joke or bad comment. They need to do something.
So MS got the Temp to dream up another PR campaign to burn up some money for them? I mean, I don't see who they are going to convince with this, nor what they have to gain by doing it. Personally I either want my computing needs served either by guys like me doing it for the sheer fun and love of it, or by some large corp that needs customers (y'know, for profits...). And even at that, I'd take the like-minded community any day.
Still, I guess a little disinformation^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H marketing never hurt anyone. Oh, 'cept those guys that tattooed company logos on their foreheads...
If all you have is a grenade, pretty soon every problem looks like a foxhole -- MightyYar
if you have "educational and development projects in 32 countries", doesn't that pretty much prove you're big?
D
The article title is misleading in focusing on the word "huge" instead of "American."
From the original news story:
The campaign, using television, print and the Internet, highlights Microsoft's education and economic development projects in 32 countries, including France and Taiwan, according to group advertising manager Mike Lucero.
"We are often perceived as a huge American company," Lucero said Friday in an interview.
"We wanted to be very specific about what we are doing in each country in education, innovation, economic opportunity and security," he said.
Either that or you guys just can't read. Clearly what the article says is just that Microsoft will advertise in other countries with the objective of seeming more like an international company...
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
The first thing they could change would be to offer free tech support to their customers. They could 'act' like a small company. Of course the article said 'look' like a small company, not act, so never mind.
That's not hard to achieve when you buy or copy most of your basic technology from outside sources, then omit staffing for adequate QA and security reviews in product development, then leverage your familiar dominant cash cows to force success new markets with mediocre products.
Why not? We're already approaching the civil rights record of Eastern Bloc countries.
The phrase "except terrorists" appears nowhere in the United States Constitution.
Just try being a bit smarter and make sure you only ever ask once what country people are in - and take note from there. In short, start assuming the US is just one other country, and there is certainly nothing special about it. Save yourself the marketing budget for something useful.
More on this? Sure, look here (Irish unit lets Microsoft cut taxes in U.S., Europe) or here (Microsoft Corp.'s Round Island One unit is Ireland's most profitable company). Or do like I did to get $insert_favourite_search_engine to produce these results: search on 'Microsoft ireland eu tax'...
--frank[at]unternet.org