Zen for branding: Call a mountain a mountain, a river a river
Tuesday 14 October 2008 - Filed under Tech Notes
I believe that many of the people who work with Microsoft products and technologies had hoped that the next Windows operating system be truly next-generation, something substantially if not radically different than the bloated Vista. While that may indeed be the big picture being drawn by Microsoft, it won’t eventuate any time soon, not with the immediate successor to Vista anyway. Early indications are that the next Windows operating system, codenamed Windows 7, will essentially be Windows Vista Prettified. That must be disheartening for some, but the good news is that it will be delivered on schedule. Oookay, but there’s something else fresh about Windows 7: This time, Microsoft will do away with dates (“98″, “2008″) and aspirational monikers (“XP”, “Vista”), but instead call the final product “Windows 7″. Now that’s news because it’s unusual for Windows. Microsoft is saying the decision to use the name Windows 7 is about simplicity.
I think calling Windows “Windows” is good marketing simply because it builds up on the strongest brand Microsoft has, not to mention avoiding the risk of creating another ill-positioned, time-limited brand like Vista. Spending money on brands that have to die doesn’t sound like the wisest move for companies the size of Microsoft. Microsoft has to kill the XP brand because it does not stand for the future while overly successful. Vista, which has failed to take over XP, has to die for the exact converse. So why bother calling Windows yet another name that is doomed one way or another? Good call.
Leave SharePoint alone
Windows is not the only example of Microsoft undermining the brand power of its own product family by getting overly inventive with names. Look at SharePoint: In order to distinguish between the free and paid versions of the same stack of technologies, Microsoft has invented two completely alienating names on top of the original product brand: WSS (“Windows SharePoint Services”) and MOSS (“Microsoft Office SharePoint Server”). Since the introduction of the MOSS acronym in particular, most IT people and non-IT people have been saying “moss” whenever they mean whichever version or part of the SharePoint products and technologies they’ve seen, used, or heard. The actual technical differences between the names may matter a great deal to administrators, developers, and licence managers, but all those end-users, executives, and recruitment consultants reciting “moss” instead of “SharePoint” without knowing what MOSS really is is a real blow to the umbrella SharePoint product brand.
Not that I’m concerned. I just think that inventing a stupid acronym as a substitute for a one-word proper noun is, well, stupid. Here’s a “refresher” presentation slide I once prepared but never got around to using in the SharePoint training sessions I conducted:
Question: What is moss?
A. ‘miss’ misspelt by a keystroke
B. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
C. A small flowerless green plant that lacks true roots, growing in low carpets or rounded cushions in damp habitats and reproducing by means of spores released from stalked capsules
The correct answer is C and it’s not even a trick question. For Microsoft, knowing what consumer brand name to push and consolidate on will undoubtedly save marketing dollars. Start calling Windows “Windows” and SharePoint “SharePoint”, and it might help enlighten all those numerous recruiters out there badly in need of experts in “Moss”, “Sharepoint” and “Share point”.
2008-10-14 » JK