Microsoft looks to create an Apple-like halo effect across its brands
Microsoft is working to consolidate all of its consumer-focused marketing in its Platforms and Services division. The ultimate, anticipated result: Microsoft will have a more cohesive branding story and sales approach across for PCs, phones and the Web.
That's one of several tidbits from the internal Microsoft reorg e-mails from CEO Steve Ballmer, Platforms & Services President Kevin Johnson, and newly minted Senior VP of Search, Portals and Advertising Satya Nadella. Om Malik (of GigaOM fame) posted all three of the internal e-mails, in their full glory, on February 14, the day Microsoft announced its latest reorg.
Microsoft execs have been studying how one of the masters of consumer marketing, Apple, has been able to parlay sales of iPhones and iPods into new Mac sales -- a phenomenon often referred to as the halo effect. Microsoft is hoping to capitalize on similar cross-product momentum with Windows Mobile phones, Zunes and Windows PCs. To kick-start its cross-brand campaign, Microsoft recently launched a $300 million consumer-focused advertising program.
In his February 14 post-reorg e-mail to the Microsoft troops, President Kevin Johnson explained Microsoft's goal of consolidating consumer audience marketing within the Platforms and Services division more clearly:
"We have revamped our engineering approach and the team is making progress on key user scenarios across the PC, phone, and Web. As we look to the future, we must reinvent our approach to consumer marketing, the pre-sales experience, the way we work collaboratively with our PC partners, and how we communicate our brand and what it stands for. To do this, we will make changes to bring all consumer audience marketing across PSD into a single organization. This will enable us to align marketing resources, eliminate silos, communicate the end-to-end experiences, and better connect with consumers."
Johnson continued:
"Today, looking globally, our sales and marketing organizations are not as well aligned by customer segment as needed, particularly as we compete in the consumer segment with companies such as Apple and Google."
PSD is the Microsoft division that oversees Windows client and -- as of yesterday's reorg -- marketing for Windows Live and Live Search. A different Microsoft division, Microsoft Entertainment and Devices (MED) oversees Xbox, Zune and Windows Mobile.
A couple of other reorg-related tips from those aforementioned internal e-mails:
* The MSN team -- which as of yesterday is now part of the combined Search, Portal and Advertising Group -- is working to make MSN.com more of a socially networked platform. In his e-mail to employees, Nadella acknowledges MSN is Microsoft's single largest source of ad revenue. The next version of MSN will be "a software engine that delivers the most relevant and social online content experience," Nadella said. " The key innovation will be around driving user centric content experiences powered by unique editorial voice and deep mining of content/search, usage and social graph."
* Nadella's team is now pushing "destination search" as the way Microsoft will grow its search share (at least until when/if the company acquires Yahoo). Last I heard, Microsoft was emphasizing "convenience search" as its best hope for growing search share. (Destination search means searches done from a dedicated search page, like www.google.com. Convenience search means searches done from whichever search engine happens to be on a page or integrated into an app.)