DEAR MICROSOFT : SELLING TRUTH I have never been able to get you to take my advi

DEAR MICROSOFT : SELLING TRUTH

I have never been able to get you to take my advice. Nor have most of the major advertising agencies succeeded in getting you to take their advice. We all fail because you think you are smarter than we are. Thats why we all agreed a long time ago to give you what you want until you fail, and become desperate enough to listen to us.

Good advertising is the truth, spoken succinctly and elegantly. There are many other kinds of advertising, on which to ride your brand, but while beer can sell with something as simple as sex, and snacks with farcical humor, the more complex, expensive and serious the product or service, the more important is selling the ‘truth’.

The truth is that Microsoft products help you get your work done. And if you want to make a living, then you need to know how to use them. Everyone else is selling cheap entertainment. You can’t play in the entertainment space unless you sell hardware, and even if you sell hardware, to take advantage of your brand, you must market to serious people doing serious things.

There is margin in business products that can NEVER exist in consumer products. So stop trying to be fashionable for consumers, and be excellent for people who want to have a job, get work done at their job, associate with people who have jobs and get work done. And enjoy life with people who have jobs and get work done.

The way to succeed is to tell this truth and trivialize all other products on the market. The global recession continues and will continue since the world economy has rebalanced its labor pools and today we live in that ‘normal’ state which we will live in for a very long time to come.

As such, Microsoft products are for people who REALLY want a better life, and everyone else’s products are for people who want to pretend they have a better life – for a few moments at least.

You would fare much better with TV ads showing EMPLOYED young people and unemployed people using non-microsoft products. Because honestly, that’s the truth.

So please stop making a fool of yourself. You succeeded. You’re now IBM. So sell to grownups on the one hand. Sell to gamers on the other. Because those two audiences you can speak the truth to.

Truth works, always and everywhere.

Curt Doolittle