Microsoft Minimized to Marketers

By Mike Maddaloni on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 at 08:48 AM with 0 comments

Microsoft Office CD and candy takeawaysEverybody has an opinion of Microsoft Corporation. Where you hear a lot of the negative comments, there are many positive ones as well. Myself, I have made a decent living working with Microsoft technology. That being said, I am "multilingual" and work with various Internet-based technologies, choosing the one best suited for my clients' needs.

Recently my wife, a marketing manager, attended a Microsoft event for the launch of Office 2007. The event was targeted to marketing professionals. The photo in this post shows the takeaways from the event, or what I like to call swag.

It wasn't clear by the design and wording on the CD packaging that this truly was a full-blown, free license of Office 2007, which was the impression my wife had. Well it is, but I had to install it first to find that out. As for the giant Hershey Kiss... yes, they simply used a label machine to print "Microsoft Office 2007" labels and slap them on the top of the box (click on the photo to see a larger photo). Apparently the candy was an afterthought, and that was about as much thought that went into it

Based on my years of experience with Microsoft, I always considered them a marketing company that happened to make software. These items have changed that opinion somewhat. I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, but this gift will take some education for me to harness its features and power.

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