In March 2006, Microsoft launched an integrated marketing communications campaign, "People-Ready Software," to be launched later in the year. Promoting Windows Vista and Office 2007 to business customers, the campaign theme emphasized that this collection of software helps companies reduce costs, increase worker productivity, and accelerate innovation by enabling collaboration, searching company databases, conducting business intelligence, and managing customer relationships. The campaign also intended to take market share away from IBM by suggesting that as a service company, IBM's expensive consultants do projects for clients and then depart. The claim was that Microsoft's software is so familiar to users that consultants are not required. Microsoft needed to generate excitement among business users for these new products because there hadn't been a major release of Windows since Windows 2000, nor of Office since Office 2003. Some of the new products' capabilities include phoning in for e-mail and having messages read out through voice recognition and translation technology, creating virtual workspaces for syncing documents and calendars for team members, and analyzing worldwide sales patterns from an Excel spreadsheet.

The campaign began with eight-page advertisements in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and other newspapers. There was also a major launch conference in New York City, where Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer appeared onstage alongside several computer manufacturers like Dell, HP, Sony, and Toshiba, as well as semiconductor manufacturers like Intel and AMD, who were all featured as Microsoft partners committed to Vista. Chief Information Officers (CIOs) from major corporations were invited to this event to see product demonstrations. In addition to newspapers, ads appeared on TV, in technology magazines, and on websites. A specific tag line for Vista in these ads was "The Wow Starts Now." It was estimated that Microsoft would spend $500 million over the coming year on this campaign, created by the ad agency McCann Erickson in San Francisco, a unit of Interpublic Group of Companies.

Because business customers have long decision cycles to upgrade software throughout their organization, the Microsoft "People-Ready Software" campaign preceded the actual launch of the products by about nine months.

Asolid advertising and promotion mix is as important in high-tech markets as in traditional markets. This importance is backed by research that found higher expenditures on both advertising and R&D lower a firm's systematic risk, thereby increasing stock returns across a variety of publicly listed U.S. companies.

 Some of the key marketing communications tools include traditional advertising (in both mass media as well as trade journals), trade shows, sales promotions (contests, incentives), public relations (event sponsorships, etc.), publicity (articles in the news media), direct marketing (mail, telemarketing), and personal selling. In addition to these traditional media, marketers are increasingly augmenting their advertising and promotion strategies with new media—a variety of Internet-based marketing tools including paid (sponsored) search advertising, online display ads, Web 2.0 techniques such as blogging and social networking, marketing in virtual worlds such as Second Life, and mobile marketing (marketing to cell phones via text messaging services), to name a few. Moreover, most (if not all) companies today have a website that is a key element in their marketing communications efforts.

This chapter discusses how high-tech marketers can use these marketing communications tools in a synergistic fashion. The chapter begins with the "advertising and promotion pyramid," a useful device to coordinate and leverage the various marketing communications tools. It continues with a focus on new media and how high-tech marketers are using new media to complement their traditional advertising and promotion strategies. Because a company's website often is one of the foundational elements of its marketing communications efforts, this chapter also presents an overview of website design and management. Appendix 11.A at the end of the chapter provides details on monitoring website traffic, an increasingly important topic given that so many companies' marketing efforts are focused on driving traffic to their websites.

The discussion of high-tech marketing communications continues in the next chapter as well, covering topics such as strategic brand management, ingredient branding strategies, and new product pre-announcement.

 

QUESTIONS

1. What are the objectives of the Microsoft advertising campaign?
2. List four media types that Microsoft utilized in this campaign.
3. List three messages communicated in the campaign?
4. Given the types of media and messages that were used in the integrated marketing campaign, do you think Microsoft was able to achieve its objectives?