Marketing now recognized as the business skill of the future

The Associated Press notes that according to the Institute for International Research, marketing is now more important than operations and financial expertise for the next generation of business leaders. We couldn't agree more.

Putting a face to GM products

Stuart Elliott of the New York Times always has something interesting to say. In today's column in the times, he takes on GM's marketing in the context of the tyranny of too much. GM is a company that isn't shy about spending marketing dollars; as one of the country's largest advertisers, it spends $3 billion (yes that's billion with a B) on advertising each year. To put that in perspective, Blackfriars estimates that GM's annual marketing spending is about 1% of the $930.1 billion to be spent on marketing in 2005.

So what's the problem? Some of the executives Mr. Elliott interviewed zeroed in on the GM's marketing challenges in very pointed terms.

"In a society looking more for a set of values on wheels to bond with, G.M. seems to be falling back on offering commodity brands" sold on deals and rebates, said Robert Passikoff, president of Brand Keys, a consulting company in New York specializing in brand and customer loyalty.

"Other brands give you a sense of what they are: Mercedes-Benz stands for living well; BMW stands for living fast; Volvo stands for safety," he added. "When we ask people about G.M. brands, we get very neutral assessments; they don't stand for anything."

Jonah Disend, president of Redscout, a brand strategy consultant in New York, agreed. "G.M. has gone from the great branding company to the great 'blanding' company," he said, in large part because "it can't possibly focus on all the brands it has."

One advertising executive actually had a refreshing take on how GM could fix this as well. His suggestion: return to the heritage of Alfred P. Sloan, who first invented the concept of marketing brands to specific types of people.

Bob Wyatt, partner and executive creative director at Union, an advertising agency in New York, said that General Motors should heed its own "heritage of branding" and recreate the model that worked so well in its early decades, of making each divisional brand stand for a different step on a hierarchy of desire.

"They should have consumers move up the ladder in the different stages of their lives as they used to, from Chevrolet all the way to Cadillac," Mr. Wyatt said. That could be accomplished by "simplifying the lineups of each division so each brand stands for something specific," he added, rather than the overly broad current approach of having, for instance, Chevrolets that run from cheap (Aveo) to expensive (Corvette).

In short, each brand has to stand for values that mean a lot to very specific people. The problem standing in GM's way isn't money -- it's the corporate will to make it happen. Sadly, in a company the size of GM, few executives are likely to take the risks necessary to make that happen.

But there are some great techniques that can help. We here at Blackfriars are big fans of a technique pioneered by Alan Cooper called scenario design. This software design technique uses personas as concrete proxies for entire classes of customers, and requires that companies think through the experiences of these personas in advance of building the product. And perhaps Alan could help GM; after all, the title of the book where he introduced the idea is The Inmates Are Running The Asylum.

Hurding HP

The Associated Press notes that HP has selected NCR CEO Mark Hurd to succeed Carly Fiorina as the head of HP. The source of that information, the Wall Street Journal notes:

Mr. Hurd isn't a stranger to effecting turnarounds. Mr. Hurd, who joined NCR in 1980, has pulled that once-troubled company out of the red, partly by slashing costs. In January, NCR, which makes automated teller machines and other retail and financial-electronic products, reported that its fourth quarter net income had surged 55% and raised its 2005 earnings forecast for the second time in nine days.

So let's get this straight. The board got rid of Carly Fiorina because she was too hard-nosed and wasn't enough in tune with "The HP Way" pioneered by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard. So to replace her, they hire someone whose description bears a striking resemblance to that of Chainsaw Al, the CEO who destroyed Sunbeam?

In all fairness, we shouldn't prejudge Mr. Hurd's performance. We admired his work at Teradata and expect he will work hard for HP. But this is a great example of corporate actions not being aligned with the messages that HP's board has been delivering. For years, we heard that Fiorina's problem was that she was too aggressive about the business results and not in tune with the more engineering and consensus-based culture at HP. Hiring an even tougher cost-cutting turnaround executive makes those messages ring untrue for anyone who has been paying attention to HP's story. We believe that this messaging disconnect will negatively affect both the stock price and the HP brand for some time to come.

The paralysis of choice

This weekend created another flood of interesting marketing articles. One was in the New York Times titled Choice Is Good. Yes, No or Maybe?. Many of the examples cited are the same ones we've quoted in The Tyranny Of Too Much, but the article suggests an interesting compromise they call "libertarian paternalism."

Mr. Thaler and Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago Law School suggested that it is proper for the government, or an employer, to set boundaries to choice to achieve desired social objectives, an approach they call "libertarian paternalism."

Sweden's default fund for social security accounts - a mixed low-fee portfolio - is an example of such paternalism. Another would be to place the dessert display at the far end of the company cafeteria. Employees could still have dessert, but the hurdle to make that choice would be a little higher. Obesity might decline.

Eric J. Johnson and Daniel Goldstein, co-director and associate director, respectively, of the Center for Decision Sciences at Columbia University, found that big majorities of Americans approve of organ donations, yet only about a quarter consent to donate their own. Meanwhile, nearly all Austrians, French and Portuguese consent to donate theirs. The difference? In the United States people must opt to become an organ donor. In much of Europe, people must actively choose not to donate. So if organ donation is considered a social good, American defaults could just be flipped around.

This libertarian paternalism is the simply public policy version of Blackfriars mantra:

Less choice creates more value in the tyranny of too much.

But it is nice to see some people thinking about the value and the costs of too much choice in government policy as well as the marketplace.

Answering the question, "Do blogs drive traffic?"

A study by Perseus says that blogs are dominantly a write-only medium, with 66% of them abandoned by their authors for at least two months without being updated. And the Pew Internet and American Life Project notes that only 27% of Internet users read blogs as of November 2004. So the question is, do blogs drive traffic?

Blackfriars now has data that says, yes, they do. The Blackfriars Blog is now four months old, and I've been looking at our historical traffic counts both before we started the blog and after. The bottom line: Blackfriars now has about four times as many visitors each day as it did before we started the blog. Even that number is probably understated because a lot of pre-blog visits were generated by Web search robots. We now have technology that allows us to sift out the non-human visitors, and we're seeing even larger increases in human traffic.

Of course, the Blackfriars Blog is not a typical blog. Less than 10% of blogs link to mainstream news sources; we almost always do. Fewer than 107,000 blogs out of the 4.12 million blogs surveyed are updated weekly; the Blackfriars Blog is updated almost daily. But it appears that blogs do deliver on the Field of Dreams promise: if you build one, the visitors will come.

The death of advertising?

Ken Auletta asks, Do Ads Still Work? It's a good question and much of the data in the article says that ads are getting lost in the tyranny of too much. One memorable quote:

A typical American household today has a choice of more than a hundred TV channels, and the broadcast networks—there are now six of them—attract only about thirty per cent of viewers. Today, it would take a hundred and twenty-five CBS, NBC, or ABC ads to reach the percentage of viewers that three network ads once reached. Rothenberg, who is now a director of Booz Allen Hamilton, the consulting firm, also says, “It’s easier for Toyota to figure out a new way of producing cars than it is for McCann-Erickson to figure out a new way of persuasion.”

Less is more takes hold in advertising?

Today's Wall Street Journal has not one, but two articles on Google's minimalist text-only advertising business that garnered $3.2 billion in revenue last year. The one titled Automated Ads Serve Up Nonsense notes that the automated system is less precise than advertisers would like, serving up ads that offer "great deals" on lost dogs, sewage, and rot. The other Your Ad Here, 10 Words Max notes that even large businesses like Intel and Pitney Bowes are starting to uses Google advertising. We here at Blackfriars are fans of the whole Google advertising trend, simply because it makes companies boil their messages down to 100 characters or fewer. After all, what's there not to like about an advertising system that prohibits blah-blah copy like "simplified, standardized and integrated IT infrastructure that meets evolving business and operational requirements"?

A tour of Pixar and a comment on how they crank out great movies

I stumbled across this visit to Pixar on blogdex and just browsed through the pictures a bit. I'm a bit in awe of Pixar; my partner Joe used to work in the movie business, and he has told me how hard it is to create just one hit movie. Pixar has created not one, but six to date. Even more amazing, they have not had one flop. That is a bit like having a baseball team that has never not won the World Series.

One quote caught my eye in the article which does help explain a bit of their success though:

They offer classes to all of their employees, no matter what department they’re in, on all aspects of filmmaking. The theory is that they want everyone in the building to understand exactly what it is that the company does, so they can all appreciate the main goals of Pixar.

This is smart marketing. Not only does this program provide education, but it also aligns the word-of-mouth marketing message that comes from employees.

Of course, no one should be surprised that Pixar is good at marketing; Steve Jobs is CEO, after all. I just want to know when he sleeps.

New rumors on Apple getting into HDTV

Blackfriars commented previously on the possibility that Apple might the HDTV content distribution market with an iTunes-like digital delivery service. Well, others are picking up on that meme now. Today, Mac OS Rumors reiterated the idea, this time with the new idea of using satellite distribution a la Sirius or XM Radio. Could be. But the Internet play sounds a lot more plausible to us.

The best marketing measurement article I've seen so far

If you're a marketer, CMO magazine is a "must read." I find I get at least one or two new ideas from every issue. They have a great article in this month's magazine on trend toward marketing measurement. But you can sum up the entire article in a line that occurs near the end in a quote attributed to not a marketer, but to quality guru W. Edwards Deming:

"In God we trust.... Everyone else bring data"

Viral marketing gets its own association

We've known for a while that traditional media forms like TV advertising are suffering from the tyranny of too many channels, too many commericals, and too many choices. So what's a marketer to turn to? The latest thing is viral marketing, and the Word Of Mouth Marketing Association is hosting its first ever World Of Mouth Marketing Summit next week. Great idea; maybe they'll come up with some viral marketing ideas that have more class than Burger King's Subservient Chicken.

But marketing can't be just about numbers

Blackfriars is a big fan of measurement as a way of refining marketing activities. But we don't believe in using sales targets or metrics as a substitute for strategy. That's why this article in the Wall Street Journal was so refreshing; it says that numeric targets are mostly used counterproductively in today's businesses. We couldn't agree more. We particularly liked the analogy cited near the end of the column:

Others fear companies are suffering from a diet that verges on anorexia or worse. Cecily Franklin, now a piano teacher in Pittsburgh and formerly a manager at Consolidated Natural Gas and a vice president at Mellon Bank, wrote, "It is only possible, or safe, to lose weight slowly. ... There comes a point when the goal is to STOP losing weight and work on maintaining it."

She noted that "it would be possible, though dangerous, to turn weight loss into a pure numbers game. By amputating an arm, one would clearly see numerical results, but one would also suddenly find it more difficult to do almost everything. And if a new 'stretch' goal arises, then another and another body part may need to be removed in order to replicate -- notice I didn't say sustain -- those results. In the end, one would lose the capacity to function altogether."

I don't know about you, but this analogy certainly rings true for us. We've seen companies cutting way past muscle and bone for years in pursuit of quarterly results instead of planning a strategy to succeed and sticking to it. But what about you? Does this sound like any companies you know?

Today's advertising: it's all about measurement

Here at Blackfriars, we have research data that says that more than two-thirds of US businesses now measure their marketing results in some objective way. That trend is now starting to invade the marketing activity that consumes the lion's share of marketing budgets: advertising. Today's Wall Street Journal has a great article on TV ads that drive people to calls to action that will allow advertisers to measure the ad's impact. The end of the article gives some insights to the ways leading advertisers are doing measurement:

A major force driving the new form is marketers' desire to know who and how many people it is reaching with a particular spot. Consumers responding to an ordinary TV ad -- going to the store, buying the product -- can't necessarily be tracked. But visitors who make the phone call to request a DVD or visit the Web site can be traced to the ad that invited them to do so.

Advertisers' desire to get concrete results from advertising is paramount these days, says John Freeland, a managing partner at Accenture, who advises clients on marketing issues. "Do they focus on marketing as a management science, or do they treat it as an art form?" he asks. "That stuff is measurable."

At Colgate, executives have been tracking the number of visits to the Web site, the duration of the visits and the redemption rate of offers, says a spokeswoman. Papa John's is able "to track our Internet orders on an hourly basis, really down to the minute, and we are able to track those back to our national TV schedule," says Jim Ensign, the company's senior director of media services.

One of Apple's secrets to success

We've been busy lately, so I have a small backlog of posts.

John Markoff published an interesting article in yesterday's New York Times titled, To Cut Online Chatter, Apple Goes to Court. Toward the end of the story, though, a group of anonymous Apple employees make a very telling point:

Despite stringent secrecy prohibitions at Apple and an insistence that only a handful of the company's executives speak to the press or public, Mr. Jobs seems to have done a reasonable good job of maintaining employee morale. Several Apple employees, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Mr. Jobs was good at convincing his workers of the need for the computer maker to speak with one voice.

Said another way, Jobs ensures that all messages to the market are simple, compelling, and consistent. Try naming another company that comes even close to this ideal. Is it any wonder that this company with only single digit market share has one of the most powerful brands in the world?

Lean consumption: a model for businesses to deal with the tyranny of too much

Today's Boston Globe has an interesting article on lean consumption, a concept being put forth in the latest Harvard Business Review. While this concept was interesting, a couple of quotes about the tyranny of too much later in the article caught my eye:

Retail giants like Wal-Mart Inc. stock up to 100,000 items at their warehouse stores. But the average family buys only about 300, Womack notes. ''To get to those 300," he said, ''you have to walk by 99,700."

....

''People want to get what they need where they need it," Womack said. ''Many people really want a smaller number of choices."

The lean consumption model says that businesses should spend more time figuring out what makes life easier for their customers and focus on those processes and services. Blackfriars would add another step: clearly communicate the benefits of those choices to the consumer. If you adopt lean consumption, but don't communicate your strategy of making choices for the customer, customers won't understand the value your company is providing.

An interesting new book: Complications

I've recently been reading the book, Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science. One of the points brought up in the book is how difficult it is for surgeons to assess their own work and examines mistakes with the types of process improvements common in manufacturing or aviation. That struck a chord with me because Blackfriars developed our objective assessment tools to address the same challenge in marketing and communications. Perhaps all professionals have similar blind spots. After all, we all find it easier to continue doing things the ways we always have instead of learning to improve. This just shows the wisdom of programs such as those for pilots that require them to undergo detailed evaluations and retraining every six months or so; perhaps we need to institute similar programs for CMOs, VPs of marketing, and even CEOs.

IDC analyst: Too many choices slows consumer spending

IDC analyst Danielle Levitas commented at the company's Directions conference that too many choices can slow the adoption of new products and put entire markets on hold. Nice to see another analyst company jump on the Tyranny Of Too Much bandwagon.

TiVo, Comcast confirm strategic partnership

Numerous stories are hitting the wires this morning about the linkup between Comcast and Tivo. Blackfriars thinks this is truly a win-win deal. Not only does it guarantee that the Tivo platform continued growth, but it provides a new form of detailed marketing measurement to both Comcast and Tivo advertisers.

For those of you who don't have Tivo, it is a ground-breaking device in coping with the Tyranny Of Too Much TV. In essence, it watches TV for you and captures those things you want to watch. So whenever we sit down to watch TV, we watch shows we like instead of whatever is on. Add the wonderful ability to skip the constant commercial clutter, and the device becomes worth every penny.

Do you want vertical marketing data?

As part of its marketing research business, Blackfriars collects data about marketing budgets, attitudes, and spending from a broad survey of senior executives each quarter. At present, that survey is designed simply to give us a broad cross-section of US businesses so we can track marketing as a piece of the US economy.

However, we've gotten many requests over the past few months to gather this data by vertical industry. We actually already collect this information, but our verticals aren't big enough to be statistically significant. Blackfriars would have to significantly expand its survey size -- and cost -- to be able to provide meaningful vertical industry data.

If you believe that you'd find vertical cuts valuable in your business, please leave a comment on this blog entry. If we get enough responses (say, 25 or more), we'll increase the Q2 survey size and provide vertical data in our Q2 report.

Tech marketing -- it's back but still lagging

The latest CMO Magazine has an article titled "Tech Marketing Is Back". The article notes that 2005 tech marketing budgets are up 6% compared to down nearly 2% going into 2004. It also notes that tech marketing as a percentage of sales increased to 3.2% for 2005.

That sounds great -- until you benchmark it against the broader US industry climate. As Blackfriars has reported before, the average budget increase for marketing in US businesses is nearly 20%, and marketing as a percentage of revenue averages about 9%. So while technology companies are doing better, they are actually falling farther behind in marketing compared with the rest of US business on average.

Now for something completely different....

Blackfriars principal Mary Timmons and I took a break from corporate marketing and communications strategy over the weekend to bring our Destination Imagination teams to the Region 3 Massachusetts Tournament. For those of you not familiar with the program, Destination Imagination is is one of the world's largest creativity and problem solving programs for youth of all ages, with thousands of participants in 47 US states, 15 countries and Canadian provinces participating annually. While the program emphasizes creativity, the tournaments also measure the quality of that creativity in fairly objective ways.

In this year's tournament, two of our teams built bridges made only from wood and glue weighing less than five ounces that were able to support more than twenty-five pounds; the winning bridges supported more than 150 pounds! And one of our other teams built entire vehicles, including propulsion and steering systems, that were capable of navigating triangular tracks and carrying multiple people. And all these activities had to be done with budgets of less than $175.

But the technical challenges of DI are only a piece of the puzzle for winning teams. All of the challenges require that the teams present their solutions to the tournament audience in engaging and entertaining ways. Many of the presentations involve sets, costumes, makeup, and special effects, all of which also must be paid for out of the team budget. Further, the teams must present and complete their solutions, including the time to set them up, in eight minutes or less.

We here at Blackfriars believe that Destination Imagination is a truly worthwhile activity for school kids. But we also believe that there are lessons here for corporate marketers and program managers. After all, when was the last time you saw a marketing program presented that was completely original, built within a shoestring budget, and could be completely presented within eight minutes?

Blackfriars applauds the work of Destination Imagination and we encourage others to encourage and support those who have participated in the program.

Everyone wonders who will replace Sony

The buzz today was about who will step up to take Sony's place in consumer electronics. The The New York Timesclaims that Samsung is now what Sony once was. On the other hand, the Wall Street Journal claims that American companies are now taking over the lead, noting the success of Apple, Microsoft, Kodak, and Radio Shack. In fact, on the WSJ's editorial page, they even wrote an obituary for Japan, Inc., claiming there is now no Japanese way of doing business that is successful.

Blackfriars thinks that the New York Times may have a better point of view here than the Wall Street Journal. There is no question that Samsung is on a roll, nowadays, as we noted a couple days ago. And we've also commented on the vision and ongoing success of American companies like Apple and Google. But we also think that the American press, particularly the WSJ, are writing the obituary of Japan much too quickly.

The place we would look for outstanding growth is at those companies that have built big barriers to entry, be they manufacturing plants, software products, or outstanding brands. Those types of assets are difficult to attack without deep pockets and stronger will. Three companies that come to our mind who have these types of assets are those that actually manufacture flat panel displays. On the plasma front, that's companies like Korean giant LG, Samsung, and Panasonic. In LCDs, it's LG, Samsung, and Sharp. What about Apple? They actually have three different hard-to-assail assets: a #1 worldwide brand, killer music and OS software, and an asset often ignored by the media: strong business relationships with both music and movie companies.

And what about Sony? It is just launching one of the hottest products it has ever built, the Sony Portable Playstation. It will also launch its Playstation 3 sometime in the next year. While it may struggle for a while, the company still has an amazing strength in its brand. In the words of a Samsung VP executive in the New York Times article:

"My product may be better today in a blind test but consumers love S-O-N-Y branded on their TV's"

In the words of Mark Twain, rumors of Sony's death are greatly exaggerated.

How not to communicate the value of a product

Bill Gates is at it again. Today, several major newspapers have articles about Microsoft's promotion of its Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 (phew! I didn't say launch because the software won't be available for several months). But this is a great example of a company pushing features without really thinking through how people will use the product in real-world environments. The Register had a fairly telling description of how the demo worked:

The software worked smoothly enough but Microsoft execs were clearly unfamiliar with dealing with the delay introduced by satellite circuits and ended up talking over each other, rather like a Robert Altman movie but without the witty banter. Echo-cancellation software might have helped. The demo was running late and ended abruptly when the satellite connection timed out and was lost but not before Troy, 'star' of US reality TV show The Apprentice, had managed to pepper the dialogue with a series on bizarre interjections. MS execs didn't know what to make of the talented celebrity's comments that he was "happy as a frog on a hot plate" or that something else was "sweating like a stuffed pig", and nor do we.

Just to summarize, a demonstration intended to show productivity benefits available to corporate executives simply demonstrated that proxies for these executives couldn't keep up a normal conversation using the tool.

These guys desperately need a marketer to explain to them that demos are supposed to show good things about a product.

Sony appoints Welsh-born American to be CEO

Everyone seems to be shaking up their CEO spots nowadays. First HP lets Carly go, now Sony's Chairman and CEO Nobuyuki Idei has resigned and handed the reigns to Howard Stringer (above article from the WSJ, also the Associated Press. This move has raised eyebrows all over the world because an American is now in charge of a Japanese company.

But Mr. Stringer will have his work cut out for him. Why? Because Sony continues to struggle with marketing. Take this test: when was the last time you saw a Sony ad or press release that made you say, "Wow, that was awesome!" I'll bet it wasn't recently. Compare that experience with today's CE powerhouse Apple, and you will realize how much ground Mr. Stringer will have to make up in the marketing department. And as an operations guy, Blackfriars isn't sure he's going to be up to the task. We only hope he has some great marketing execs in his rolodex.

The attack of the killer LCDs

Samsung continues to be one of the hot Åsian companies that is making inroads into American life. Americans are as likely to carry a Samsung cell phone as a Sony one nowadays. Much of that success has been due to marketing, and Samsung knows it, having recently elevated Peter Weedfeld a veteran marketer to Senior Vice President, Strategic Marketing & New Media.

But the big play nowadays is in flat screen TVs, as we noted at this year's CES. We saw the 102-inch plasma monsters that Samsung brought to that show and plans to sell in 2006 for upwards of $100,000 each (note: even at that stratospheric price, their upcoming production is largely spoken for). But what many don't know is that Samsung is an LCD powerhouse as well. Just last week, the company held a press conference (noted here in the Wall Street Journal) for its new 82-inch LCD panel. For a world that seems to believe that LCDs just aren't competitive above 37 inches or so, Samsung is joining Sharp in proving that view wrong.

The marketing challenge to plasma TVs

Today's New York Times Circuits section has an article on the fact that plasma TV markers are starting to face serious challenges to their current domination of the flat screen TV market. Blackfriars made that call earlier this year. The article then goes on to compare the various features of plamsa TVs versus its competing technologies.

Our view: plasma TV marketers should be doing some serious marketing planning. Blackfriars saw all the wonders of flat TV (1 2), at CES (our web site is still getting numerous hits every day by people looking for that Samsung 102-inch plasma TV). But like many technology products, the high-tech sell of plasma TV is wearing thin, particularly as plasma tries to break out of its niche of video afficionados. If marketers aren't careful, plasma companies could be engaged in the same race to low-margin commoditization that is afflicting PC makers today.

So what should plasma marketers do? For one thing, start selling the lifestyle benefits of TV, not its geeky features. Sharp notes that its LCD-based flat screens are the only ones you can hang near a window; plasma makers need to similarly differentiate their products in terms of what consumers care about. Secondly, plasma makers need to start making flat HDTV simple to install and set up. The LCD world has already been through that battle with computers, and they've done a good job. If plasma doesn't start rethinking their image, these systems that currently cost between $4,000 and $40,000 will start looking as cool as 8-track tape decks. How soon do they have to get their act together? They have some time; they just have to have their products consumer-friendly before Apple enters the HDTV market. But don't wait too long; that could happen this year.

Tyranny Of Too Much affecting TV advertising this year

Today's Wall Street Journal talks about today's opening of the American Association of Advertising Agencies Media Conference. The current buzz: demand for TV advertising this year is very weak because of the increasing fragmentation of audiences (i.e., the tyranny of too much). Some interesting bits....

Media buyers' fundamental concern is this: Even as audiences continue to erode, networks keep raising ad prices, sometimes to above what buyers think the market should bear. With a bevy of new-technology options starting to beckon, speculation has begun that TV has reached a turning point, media buyers say.

Signs already are afoot. Marketers aren't clamoring for "scatter," or ad time purchased as needed during the season, says Mr. Grubbs. If demand is down, then prices are, too -- not good for the broadcast networks, which typically use marketers' immediate need for scatter ad time to charge them a premium. If it continues, the trend would make for a shabby backdrop when broadcast networks tout their coming schedules to advertisers in May.

Microsoft recognizes Windows needs marketing help

Microsoft appears to have decided to do something about its egregious Windows marketing. It just appointed former AT&T Wireless exec Michael Sievertto head its Windows Product Management.

One interesting thing about this appointment is that Sievert is a former CMO, not a tech guy. That's rare at Microsoft. The downside? When Blackfriars analyzed the messaging clarity of the major cellular carrier Web sites a couple years ago, they achieved some of the lowest scores we had ever seen. Clearly Sievert has his work cut out for him.