Microsoft's Brand Confusion Runs Deep
The LiveSide blog today took a look at all the different bits of Microsoft's Live.com search universe and found that while the new look may live up to the stated design principle of "Simple and powerful. Human. Fast." it doesn't provide a common, unified experience. LiveSide found four different search boxes, two different Live.com "orb" logos (in four different sizes), and six different header backgrounds. While the slight differences in design may not be a very substantial issue, it is indicative of the confusion Microsoft has created around their Live brand.
In February of last year we wrote about the branding mess that existed around the Windows Live family of services, and Microsoft's online branding strategy in general. At the time we quoted ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley who pointed out that Live was sometimes used to brand services, sometimes to brand desktop products, and sometimes destination sites. Worse, at times single products have had multiple names and sometimes the Live branding resulted in very clumsy product titles, such as "Windows Live Search for Windows Mobile." Live has also had a lot of overlap between products.
The Live brand confusion is something that Richard MacManus first wrote about on his ZDNet blog in 2006. Why then, hasn't this been fixed yet? It has gotten better -- MSN Hotmail vs. Windows Live Mail vs. Windows Live Hotmail seems have settled on the latter name, for example -- but there is still a lot of overlap in the Windows Live family that makes it confusing for consumers.
When we were briefed a couple of weeks ago about the launch of Microsoft Live Mesh, we asked how the company planned to reconciled yet another file backup service with SkyDrive, Live Drive, FolderShare, SharedView, and Spaces, each of which have some amount of overlap at the service level with Mesh. The answer we got was itself confusing and muddled and basically boiled down to, those services can use the Mesh as their back end platform. The impression that we got, though, was that even people at Microsoft tend to be a bit confused about how the whole Live universe fits together.
The design differences across the Live Search sites highlighted today on the LiveSide blog may be minor, but taken as a whole they're a good metaphor for the branding confusion that Microsoft has created across its collection of online sites and services. If designers in the search division can't get together and decide on a unified design for a single family of Live products, it's no wonder the Live brand on the whole has become so sprawling and muddled.
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The whole "Live" experience has been a mess since the beggining. It was supposed to be the next generation of services but these were rolled out or renamed too slowly, with some very uncomplete Beta try-out.
The problem was that the Live branding was supposed to solve the mess introduced with the MSN brand but the live brand is in the same state the MSN brand was a few years ago. The look-n-feel has changed too many times. I think I've seen a new look on live.com every time I went there in the last two years.
Google has success in the same field because they are rolling out applications still in a Beta stage, but usable enough to be used on a daily basis. Also, they provide a quite consistent user experience which makes you feel you are using a line of products.
Some companies are suffering from that egocentric use of their brand. You have to use a brand when you believe it can enhance what people think about your products.
We have a company in Quebec which is called Quebecor Media. Quebecor Media owns TV networks, a chain of music superstores, a cable distribution network and some newspapers. All these divisions have their own brand-name which are all successful independently, but Quebecor insist on adding their name everywhere they can on all these subdivisions. The problem is that nobody love the Quebecor brand which has a very bad image problem.
I feel it's the same with Microsoft who is trying too hard to push a brand or a so-called consistency that nobody asked for.
microsoft seems to be totally confused about the windows libe search. they are changing the name , ui layout but not trying to improve their search. What happen to this Gr8 Software development company. i think they are more focusing on different things rather then then search develoment
The problem is, that Microsoft failed to find the bigger picture for itself. What should "Live" be? The name ("Windows Live") suggests a virtual OS, the products suggest that it should be a set of technological solutions.
I thought a lot about how to improve Microsoft's online experience myself, I like telling others what's good for them. You know what? I can't come up with something good for Microsoft.
They know that growth is limited and expensive in the content business (MSN), where they have to compete with a lot of players in a lot of countries. (News websites, etc.)
With "Windows Live", Microsoft tries to do technological stuff - something Google is great in. This is probably how they differentiate MSN from Live.
The problem is: The combination of things Microsoft does doesn't make sense. And they should immediately fire their whole UI experience team or whoever is responsible for all the things they do. It's aweful.
Google showed that simple design is the best you can do. They should buy FriendFeed and give Kevin Fox permission to redesign all Windows Live properties without having to consult anybody. Something like that.
After that, they should kill the "Windows" from the brand (which they already did in Live Mesh).
Then, they should kill downloadable apps (like Windows Live Hotmail Desktop, or whatever it's called).
This would at least remove some of the confusion around "Live". (What a stupid name...)
But really, what's Microsoft's future in the market? I have no idea, and I have advice for nearly every company...
Maybe Microsoft should drop the whole Live concept and start concentrating on creating useful and innovative services instead, like the smorgasbord offer of Yahoo!?
(smorgasbord, btw is derived from the Swedish word "smörgåsbord", literally meaning "table of sandwiches" (for a Swedish guy like me, this is noteworthy))
Parenthetical note:
I spotted a small typo in the last sentence of the second paragraph from bottom. Hint: The first commenter got it right.
(I hope you don't think I'm trolling too offensively or frequently in your comments' area, please let me know if that's the case :-))
/Jonas
Posted by: impl.emented.com
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May 8, 2008 2:12 AM
The problem is that Microsoft still don't grasp the internet, and what they should do about it. They can't decide what area of the internet to go after. I have recently attended a 2nd focus group for their adcenter marketing - the 1st was a year ago - and nothing had really changed. They were asking almost the same questions, and getting the same answers as a year ago. What was apparent is that they were lost as to what market they were trying to go after. And their focus was on how to try and advertise / promote themselves to users (advertisers), instead of focusing on just building a better product. It is the same with their 'Live' branding. They are trying too hard to sell the Microsoft internet offerings to people, instead of just creating offerings that work properly and people will want to use. Google became successful because they built a great product (better search results than anyone else), and it became popular through word of mouth of users. Google didn't have to promote itself, they have been able to benefit from user generated PR. It's an alien concept to Microsoft.
Amen, brother! The only thing more confusing than Microsoft's Live branding is the Democratic Party super delegate system for selecting Obama or Clinton.
I blogged about the confusion in Microsoft's Live branding here... http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/27408
M$ should take all the big fat salary's away. Lets see if all the "experts" still stick around to screw M$ into the ground?!
The fundamental problem is that at MSFT, the salesmen are in charge and the products are, simply put, junk.
Vista has been a disaster with aggregation websites created to list the millions of problems and recommendations against using it (even the UK government).
Xbox is dead meat because of thermal overloads on up to 40% of the devices.
Zune is a, well, the less said about Zune the better. Has anyone ever seen a Zune in the wild? Better still, has anyone ever seen "the social" (two or more Zunes together) in the wild. Simple a disaster and a nonstop toilet for shareholder money.
There is Windows Mobile. Ever wonder why no one writes about a WinMobile "killer"? "nuff said about this disaster.
Remember Playsforsure? Yup, another disaster where users got screwed by the Great Bloatfarm.
Remember SPOT, the smart watch that was going to take the world by storm? MSFT eithanized it about six weeks ago, years after it should have been set to rest.
The relentlessly recurring pattern: junk products hurled over the transom to clueless marketeers. Who but a clueless marketeer would have chosen a tag line of "The Wow is Now!" for such a monumental failure (MSFT propaganda to the contrary)?
Sure, coordinate brands, get a better communication on your products but, ABOVE ALL, get real products, not the kind of road kill detritus that consumers despise because after a while, they look at the company and despise it, too. Can you see it? MSFT = GM.