Microsoft Flim-Flam

I have been thinking about a story on Microsoft’s latest attempt to repair the image of the company’s latest operating system, Vista, that appeared in the media recently.

Microsoft hired a branding company - Bradley & Montgomery - which was the first mistake. (Note, by the way, the antiquated use of the word, “press,” on B&M’s Web site. Should give you some clue as to how savvy they are.)

Branding companies are those “Professor Harold Hill-type” outfits that desperate corporations hire to try to convince people that flawed products or services are really good, and that it’s just your fault that you cannot comprehend that.

What Bradley and Montgomery did on behalf of Microsoft (at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars) was to try to trick a small group of people into thinking that the Vista operating system was something called, Mojave. Sort of like a high tech shell game by a carnival huckster. It really did not appear to be an honest experiment.

NPR’s Bob Garfield really put the Vista-Mojave controversy into perspective when he said, “If a product has a bad reputation, it is not because of faulty perceptions … it is because of a faulty product.”