It’s not nice to tell our branding folks that their work sucks, but sorry, it’s so obvious now that I just can’t pretend to like it. Dare Obasanjo’s post demonstrates what’s wrong very well.
We need names that are:
1) Consistent.
2) Simple.
3) Easy to tell a friend (Try saying Windows Live Local five times really fast, for instance).
4) One word that’s less than eight characters (Google wins!)
5) A domain that we own. Spend the money if we don’t have it.
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Robert Scoble works at Fast Company.TV (title: Managing Director). Everything here, though, is his personal opinion and is not read or approved before it is posted. No warranties or other guarantees will be offered as to the quality of the opinions or anything else offered here.
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March 25th, 2006 at 9:24 am
ok try saying vista to a clerk, he will say “what!”
http://www.irintech.com/x1/
March 25th, 2006 at 10:22 am
I have always thought that Microsoft’s brading was, sorry but being rude, rubbish. Coming up with stupid names like XP and Vista are awful. Not to mention the MSN stuff (what exactly is different between Microsoft and MSN!?). I also wish you wouldn’t stick things like Professional Enterprise Edition 2003 on the end as it just makes things worse. You need to higher a new product naming group ;)
March 25th, 2006 at 10:48 am
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March 25th, 2006 at 12:09 pm
Hello Mr. Back-ache-the-rapist,
this is not an advertisment challenge, refrain..
March 25th, 2006 at 12:10 pm
In an increasingly viral services world online, catchy names are key. Microsoft should rebrand its offerings in amore consistent manner. Think of a portfolio of offerings that blend together. Now it seems totally uncordinated. The connections across different brand names will also ease communication to the consumers as well as the stock analysts–who are as confused about where MSFT is going.
March 25th, 2006 at 12:14 pm
Robert, numbers 1 through 5 are already satisfied by “live”, just someone decided to put the prefix “Windows” on everything you guys do. Case in point, Windows Internet Explorer 7.
March 25th, 2006 at 1:07 pm
Good point on the site name issue. Though you may run into problems, as buying domains can be very expensive. You’d need a serious marketing budget to buy domains, and with the constraints on resources that your firm faces, it just may not be possible to buy all the domains that the marketing team needs.
Do you think that a day’s interest on the interest on the petty cash hoard would cover it? Maybe 2 days worth!
March 25th, 2006 at 1:08 pm
I think the tipping point for me was when Avalon and Indigo got renamed to ‘Windows Presentation Framework’ and ‘Windows Communication Framework’ (respectively). I still haven’t figured out what was wrong with the initial names that they had - could you imagine Apple renaming stuff like Quartz, Carbon, Cocoa? Do your Marketing guys really think that the end user *cares* what the technology is called?
March 25th, 2006 at 1:09 pm
I should point out I mean the end user rather than the developer …
March 25th, 2006 at 1:48 pm
branding is not something you decide with comments - the more people you ask, the worse your branding will be. keep it simple and tight. decide within a very small group of people.
yes, microsofts branding is very untight and chaotic. but at the same time i believe thats microsoft: you don’t care so much about tight control and tight design. you are everywhere all the time. with success so far.
March 25th, 2006 at 2:07 pm
“Origami” or “Ultra Mobile Personal Computer (UMPC)”
March 25th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
Not to dispute your assertions, but are there not recent MS distractions that could use embellishment before going here?
- scott -
March 25th, 2006 at 2:32 pm
Microsoft’s websites remind me a great deal of the phone company websites I’ve encountered. There is little consistency between pages, and you are always one link away from entering this ‘legacy area’ of the website that is no longer updated (and looks nothing like the previous pages you’ve visited) or clicking and ending up with a dead link (404 error) which is just plain silly.
It leads to the idea that when you are searching for answer you might find it, or you might get trapped in some place with a partial answer and go away looking for a third party site that has more information.
Rebranding a new site into the existing structure just seems is kind of like filming another ending for a movie so it can be released on DVD and just confuse the user even more.
my two cents.
March 25th, 2006 at 3:52 pm
What’s worse is that after numerous revisions you licensing schemes still suck, especially for us corporate monkeys. I know corporations that have ‘licensing specialists’ just for your products.
March 25th, 2006 at 5:32 pm
6. Can be made into a verb.
March 25th, 2006 at 5:39 pm
The problem is, Microsoft branding is just silly. It tries to be so descriptive so that the name tells you everything you need to know. However, unlike “Snakes on a Plane”, you guys can’t do it well, and you ignore the branding of your most successful products:
Word
Excel
Access
PowerPoint
Windows
Can you imagine the carnage if the prats doing your branding now were responsible for those?
Instead of Word, you’d have “Microsoft Word Processing For Windows”. Instead of Excel, you’d have “Microsoft Spreadsheet and Financial Calculations”
The Avalon and Indigo stuff is dead on. Those were GREAT names. So what if they didn’t describe what they talked about perfectly…they don’t have to. Tell me, which sounds better on stage…
“And now, see the future of the Windows interface…ladies and gentlemen…Avalon!”
Or what you’re stuck with now:
“And now, see the future of the Windows interface…ladies and gentlemen…The Windows Presentation Foundation!”
I mean, damn, Apple showed that a simple name for a product works:
iMovie and iPhoto as opposed to “Microsoft Digital Image” or “Microsoft Movie Maker”.
iTunes or Windows Media Player.
Note how for the Apple versions, I don’t have to tell you who makes them. You google for iMovie, or iPhoto, or iTunes, you know this *instantly”
But Digital Image? Movie Maker? Why not just change WIndows to “Graphical Operating System”?
Apple hasn’t significantly changed the name of their OS since 2001. Mac OS X
Yet, in the same amount of time you have:
Windows 2000
Windows XP Home
Windows XP Professional
Windows 2000 Server
Windows 2003 Server
and on, and on, and on.
Microsoft branding passed “Suck” and ran joyously into “execrable” YEARS ago. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Michael Spindler was your VP of branding.
You guys need to get someone with style. Fast.
March 25th, 2006 at 5:40 pm
You should thank the sweet lord that the Windows Branding Morons didn’t get ahold of the Xbox.
Otherwise, it would be “MIcrosoft Video Game Console”.
March 25th, 2006 at 6:15 pm
Microsoft are completely out of touch with respect to anything that real people (non nerds or corporate IT people) care about. Everybody involved in branding MS seems to be a frigging zombie with zero sense of creativity or fun.
Naming is an art form. Snappy, short and sweet usually does it best. See “Sparkle” vs. “Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer”. Now “Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer” is a truly innovative product, but any major dude can tell you that “Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer” is a lousy name. Saying “Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer” too often, saps all the strength from your body.
MS Dudes and Dudettes! Listen to you customers. We HATE your naming schemes. Do something about it.
March 25th, 2006 at 6:36 pm
Bobinho: it’s not just the customers who hate our naming schemes. I hate them too!
March 25th, 2006 at 6:58 pm
Someone in Microsoft Branding needs to own up to the fact that spending whatever fortune was spent to buy “live.com” (and it’s equally wasted brother “start.com”, what the heck is domain like that being used for an “incubation experiment” for anyway?) was a poor investment, and they shouldn’t throw out the “MSN” branding for the hugely awkward “Windows Live” just to justify the purchase…
MSN is easy satisfies items 1-5 and has tons of brand recognition due to the ubiquitous “MSN Messenger”. Renaming that to “Windows Live Messenger” is a terrible, terrible, terrible decision that will, at best, dilute the brand.
Right now, people say “I’ll see you later on MSN”. If this change goes through, that’s not to change to “I’ll see you on Windows Live”, it’ll be “I’ll see you on Messenger” (thus losing the whole branding) or something easier, like “I’ll see you on AIM/Gtalk/Meebo/etc..”
It’s obvious to everyone, even without marketing training or experience, that “Windows Live” is terrible. MS Branding seems to be going through enormous ego (”We must rebrand everything in my image!”) and/or collectively wrong groupthink.
March 25th, 2006 at 7:22 pm
This inability to consistently brand is just symptomatic of a greater problem. You’re just too big and unwieldly, with a centre of gravity that’s too high off the floor to safely change direction with any speed. The wrong people/departments are being given responsibility over the wrong areas.
We are just starting to glimpse the first signs of Microsoft becoming the GM of the computer industry. This is not inevitable, but there comes a point where the momentum in this direction gets to supertanker proportions - and you suddenly realise you are heading for a fog bank, and both the sonar and radar have stopped working.
March 25th, 2006 at 7:30 pm
In my professional experience, it’s usually not the copywriters who are responsible for bad naming; it’s the client/management/executive — the person who makes the final decision. The client will get handed a list of recommendations or suggestions, and then will decide on one because his sixteen year old daughter thinks it sounds the best. The creative teams don’t have any decision making authority.
March 25th, 2006 at 7:31 pm
LOL what MSFT has finally achieved is to replace their creative marketing people with lawyers and collective committees.
March 25th, 2006 at 8:36 pm
Sparkle vs Expressions Interactive Designer is the worst offense yet. Something is horribly wrong when you change a product name from something like Sparkle to EID. WTF is wrong with Microsoft Sparkle?
At least Avalon and Indigo can be shortened to WPF and WCF.
March 25th, 2006 at 9:03 pm
“creative marketing people”…that’s a contradiction in terms.
March 25th, 2006 at 9:53 pm
Wireless World: Wirelessly monitoring ECGs
CHICAGO, March 24 (UPI) — An elderly woman has a heart attack. Paramedics arrive on the scene at her home a few minutes later and begin to revive her, and hook up an electrocardiogram transmitter to her chest, and send the signals, wirelessly, to a cardiologist at the hospital, who reads the vital signs on a handheld device. That technology advance is now saving lives, experts tell United Press International’s Wireless World. And it’s just one of the ways hospitals are today innovatively using wireless devices.
A new study, conducted by cardiologists at Duke University Medical Center and the NorthEast Medical Center, located in North Carolina, found that doctors can find and remove clots from heart-attack patients in half the time that they previously took, because of wireless transmission of ECGs en route to the hospital. Reducing the amount of time before surgery begins is vital, for the faster the doctors open an artery, the higher the odds are that the patient’s heart muscle can be saved. By Gene Koprowski
March 25th, 2006 at 10:37 pm
[...] Source: Scoble [...]
March 26th, 2006 at 3:58 am
Robert, could you please send these comments to the geniuses who come with these official names, because they really need to see what people think of them.
Microsoft have some great product names like, windows, office, word, powerpoint, exel, visual studio, etc, but over the past couple of years they have been coming up with the best codenames but worst the official names you could of. Plus it drives me crazy everytime I hear ‘Of course apples product names are far superior’.
March 26th, 2006 at 4:13 am
Forgive me but I think Windows Live is actually one Microsoft got right. It ties in with another very successful and innovative Microsoft product and service, Xbox Live.
To me it makes perfect sense.
Windows Live will be the primary service platform from Microsoft when you are in your office.
Xbox live is the online service which you will use in the living room.
I have actually been working on some ideas that I am going to share with Microsoft on mashing the two services. Basically you could put certain gadgets and feeds and other services into xbox.live.com (doesn’t exist yet) and consume and share them on your 360 with your online friends there.
At any rate, if you are using a modern software/hardware combo and browser (hopefully it will get faster) Windows Live search is 1000 better a front end and more useable to advanced users than Google search. (which doesn’t help much if you still must become more relevant)
The one complaint I have with Live search is you can’t increase text size inside the kick ass scroll window because of the scroll window itself, and the code likes to kill iexplore.exe.
MSN, IMHO hits it’s target audience pretty well too. I increasingly consider MSN as Microsoft’s product for baby boomers. Nothing too fancy, just oldschool research into what users like in a portal.
Overall, I think Google’s branding is outdated, but done in a way which makes it more usable. Which is fine I guess, but I wish they would do more work on their interfaces.
March 26th, 2006 at 4:45 am
[...] Microsoft Web Branding Sucks - so says Scoble. I think they finally got it right with Live, but I still can’t get it to do anything in Safari. [...]
March 26th, 2006 at 5:45 am
The one that particularly bugs me is “Windows Live Mail”. Everyone knew what Hotmail was, and by replacing that with 3 extremely generic words, you’re not doing yourselves any branding favors. Besides, why have the word “Windows” in there at all? As far as I know, you don’t have to be running Windows to use “Windows Live Mail.”
I’ve noticed from talking to many Microsoft employees that most of them use the code names instead of the ultimate product (marketing names): “Kahuna”, “Whidbey”, “Avalon”, “Yukon”, “Shilow”, etc, etc. Since y’all are so into “dog-fooding”, maybe you should have to use the product names too, just so you can see how cumbersome they are. A lot of us out in the community use the code names too — not so that we can be “cool” but because THEY ARE BETTER NAMES. When your internal “code names” become better than your “marketing” names, you have a definite branding problem.
March 26th, 2006 at 6:59 am
[...] Y veo que Scobble no para la crítica. Hoy leyendo su blog veo un título que dice Our Branding Sucks, digamos algo como nuestra marca es una porquería. Lo que Scobble argumenta, citando a Obasanjo es que Google crea todas sus marcas con una coherencia, con la misma imagen y llamándolas a todas Google más algo. También explica que Yahoo hace lo mismo con Yahoo Finance, Yahoo News, etc. Pero como sabemos Microsoft tiene un universo de muchísimas marcas (MSN, Office, Windows, Vista) con nombres bastante absurdos. Si leeis el post también vais a poder ver que los que comentan como atacan la estrategia de marca de Microsoft. ¿Te imaginas a El Corte Inglés del que se rumorea que amenaza con quitar publicidad a cualquier medio que le critique duramente, contratando a un empleado bloguero que le diga lo que todos ya sabemos y es que SU estrategia de marca es una porquería? Fuente: Martin Varsavsky [...]
March 26th, 2006 at 8:01 am
‘Live’ is a great name. Microsoft should drop the ‘Windows’ preceding it.
Other Microsoft products with unnecessarily long names include the Microsoft Management Console (the ‘Microsoft’ bit is kind of unnecessary) and Microsoft Cluster Services (MSCS - again, the ‘Microsoft’ word is unnecessary). This will probably be renamed to ‘Windows Cluster Services’ before it gets renamed to ‘Cluster Services’.
Windows Server Update Services (WSUS)? WSUS updates more than Windows Server.
‘Enterprise Manager’ (SQL) and ‘Systems Manager’ (Exchange) are vague names for management consoles.
Gyah, I have to make a blog so that I too can rant about the inconsistency of Microsoft product names and the different syntaxes used by ntdsutil.exe and diskpart.exe.
March 26th, 2006 at 9:22 am
Always a marvel, but I am gonna ever-so slightly depart from conventional wisdom here.
You guys need to get someone with style. Fast.
Consumer market’s aren’t the main lunch, too cutesy and iFruit feeling. Enterprise needs something that sounds heavy military and legal jargoned. The Exec’s look at the demographics, and name it accordingly. The Apple perfect marketing branding, wins consumers by storm, but outside of certain creative niche’s, remains isolated. But I think dual titles would work, consumer nomage, with a subtitle. But the Vista multiple versions kick is going to be a headache serious.
March 26th, 2006 at 3:30 pm
Not really Christopher. The Xserve RAID is hardly a consumer product, and is doing quite well out of the creative niche too, as is the Xserve.
I can tell you that *I* was the guy who had to explain Vista to my 90% windows company. And the SKUs.
When the Unix guy has to do that, the branding and marketing is crap.
March 26th, 2006 at 4:02 pm
[...] Leo en el blog de Martín Varsavsky que Robbert Scobble (blogger de Microsoft) ha puesto a caldo su empresa argumentando que Microsoft no sabe crear marcas y que las que hace son muy confusas. En cambo, basándose en un post de Dare Obasanjo, compara las marcas de Microsoft con las de Yahoo o Google que están compuestas por el nombre de la empresa + el nombre que complementa el servicio. También habla sobre que las marcas han de ser cortas y dice que han de tener menos de 8 letras (no sé de donde saca la cifra). También dice que han de ser nombres fáciles y que esto no pasa en Microsoft. [...]
March 26th, 2006 at 4:59 pm
I’ve always thought that Microsoft’s code names for projects have been better than the official product names they’ve been actually released by. The names are catchy and simple.
Contrast Whidbey vs. Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition.
March 26th, 2006 at 6:12 pm
When the Unix guy has to do that, the branding and marketing is crap.
Yeah, I am still in agreement mostly, just I know the CIO style in things procurement, the more consumerish the image, the less actionable it becomes. But Microsoft has a huge task ahead of them per Vista, but why they will kick out $500 million plus. With Microsoft it usually takes that much. They are the greatest success story failure; OS and Office fund an Empire of Rot.
March 26th, 2006 at 6:24 pm
I still love how people are justifying the plethora of SKUs for Vista as “Choice”. I guess it sounds better than “Lets MS charge you multiple times for the same thing”.
March 26th, 2006 at 6:28 pm
John: now who is being unaccurate? For someone who says he’s so concerned about my accuracy, you sure seem to play lose and fast with your opinions.
March 26th, 2006 at 7:06 pm
[...] Robert Scoble, God bless him, is willing to tell the truth about Microsoft and Branding. Let’s compare and contrast Microsoft’s and Apple’s branding: [...]
March 26th, 2006 at 11:45 pm
Robert,
There have been multiple people in this blog and others saying that Microsoft is providing choice via multiple SKUs.
I’ve yet to see anything that shows any kind of reason other than “Charge multiple times for the same thing” for six skus. Some aren’t even able to be bought outside of enterprise agreements, and Microsoft has spent time making it easier to change your version of Windows to a ‘better’ one on the fly, in case you need a feature that wasn’t in the one you bought.
There’s no hard technical reason for six SKUs, and we both know it. Detecting hardware types and creating an appropriate installation for that hardware is well-solved problem, so it’s not like Microsoft cannot do this. Unless they are truly unable to do what every other OS vendor has been doing for a while now.
That leaves us with a non-technical reason.
It’s not to make things easier, as six SKUs make things more complex, especially since some of them are not available outside of enterprise licensing agreements, which are hideously complex as is.
So technical is out, barring incompetence/utter lack of skills.
It’s not to increase simplicity, that’s obvious.
The choice reasoning is a fallacy on the face of it.
It’s not to save consumers money, as it actually costs Microsoft more to have six SKUs, six lines of packaging, etc. One SKU would drastically decrease Microsoft’s costs here, and allow them to charge less.
So what is left is based on marketing and sales, and making it easier to turn what should be a one time purchase, an OS, into a set of multiple revenue streams. Face it, going from Vista (whatever) to Vista (whatever) is free money for Microsoft. It’s a coldly brilliant idea.
Contrary to popular belief, I do give things a bit of a think here and there. Now, if you have real evidence for six SKUs that falls outside of my reasoning, by all means, provide better facts, and I’ll alter that opinion to take them into account. But based on the facts that I’ve been able to find, and quite a bit of experience at more levels of this biz than you may realize, I’m comfortable with my opinion and the reasoning behind it.
March 27th, 2006 at 3:49 am
[...] This has been a tough week for Microsoft, and for the Microsoft brand. The scheduled release of Vista has been moved back from 2006 to early 2007, missing the big Christmas season. Release of Office 2007 will also be delayed until the new year. As if this wasn’t enough, the company also announced a massive re-org intended to re-align desktop and online strategies. And, at the end the week, both Dare Obasanjo and Robert Scoble cite weaknesses in emerging Microsoft brands. Dare compares new MS online brand efforts to competing Google and Yahoo brands, and finds the Microsoft brands confusing. The Scobelizer agrees. [...]
March 27th, 2006 at 7:53 am
Look at the Channel 9 video with Bill Gates from Mix. EVEN BILL GATES snickers when he mentions Windows Presentation Format Embeded. So if your names are not liked by developers, not by users, not by evangelists like your self, not by the laywers, and not by Bill Gates - who is liking these names? Who comes up with them? You ought to do an interview with that person.
March 27th, 2006 at 10:18 am
[...] According to Robert Scoble, the Microsoft website branding sucks. Now there’s a thought. [...]
March 27th, 2006 at 5:04 pm
But Live and start.com works, you just didn’t clean out MSN to begin with. Once again, your legacy applications and business relationships are holding you back.
MSN Video
Windows Live Local
1. remove Windows
Live mail
Live Spaces
2. Don’t advertise your other software in the names itself - Keep MSN or kill it.
Live Money, Money.com or Live Finance
Groups.live.com or Live Sharing or Our Lives
Live talk or Live Messenger
Live Video
Live Local or Live Neighborhood or Live Guide
Live Spaces
To be honest, I don’t think it matters. ESPN.com has technically been espn.go.com or something for years, but no one even knows what go.com is, right? I’ve never gone there, but espn.com is literally visted 365 days a year by me. And it’s one of the most popular websites. Having said that, the branding on the website itself isn’t actually labeled “espn presented by go.com” or anything. Considering the disparity in audience, it SHOULD be “go.com presented by espn.com”.
But this also points out how useless your MSN branding might be. If IE went to live.com by default, who would care? Some folks might be confused for a little while, but chances are they went to msn.com because they didn’t know any better. So, have a transition, change msn.com to start.com, and start renaming things like you’re doing with msn spaces, but DON’T stop. Or live/start/msn/windows/passport/.net will cease to be useful to consumers.
Brands should be pointers, right? If they’re confusing or mis-matched they don’t actually contribute as advertising, they therefore should be redone. In the auto world, Land Rover isn’t Ford Land Rover, because that would dilute the luxury brand. And the Neon certainly isn’t labeled, “Dodge Neon presented by Mercedes Benz” Currently, MSN is diluting your cred with geeks, and Windows is diluting your name with webanistas. So I think Live is newest, and start.com makes sense for a new MSN home page.
But I don’t know where your legacy MSN network is going (are you still dialup only?) or what’s behind tacking ‘Windows’ onto every web property? If you want to cut your web properties in two, then just do it. Geeky stuff is live, and more mainstream stuff is msn. But currently, I don’t think you have a plan.
March 28th, 2006 at 1:56 am
My speculation:
Adding the name “Windows” to a product makes it feel like its integrated with Windows (OS). That way the anti-trust cases can be thwarted.
And MS can also argue that Windows exists only as a package of the OS, Live and other apps, thus they can’t split them up.
I can’t see any other reason, other than the management not feeling confident about a new product that they have to use the “Microsoft” or “Windows” leverage to make it popular.
March 31st, 2006 at 4:20 pm
I live in Italy, at least “Vista” is an easy name for Italians to remember. Hey guys what do you think of our name “nozio” http://www.nozio.com easy to remember or not?
May 9th, 2006 at 11:33 pm
Is Microsoft Headed For 3pointD?
Microsoft’s Robert Scoble dropped in on the second day of the Metaverse Roadmap to hang out and observe the proceedings — and give John Swords and me a podcast interview, along with his son Patrick, that will soon be up on The Metaverse Ses…
May 23rd, 2006 at 7:16 pm
debt free
exasperated amulets.minoring sew clusterings madly Victorianizes debt consolidation http://www.debt-consolidation-agent.com/
November 5th, 2006 at 3:13 pm
i agree MS branding is not the best but their products are still funtional and easy to use. :-)
December 18th, 2006 at 9:31 am
i read your comments dare obasanjo and i feel i want to say naming according to microsoft brand maybe aimed at particular group like the italian nozio said.
what do you think of names like koverseas, bilvent and baft all around here in africa and making a strong brand.