Microsoft is about to deliver a new brand to the world: Bing. The name is for the company's refreshed Internet search service (it replaces the current Live Search moniker). Like Microsoft's other nonsensical consumer brand, Zune, Bing is one of those made up names that doesn't tell you anything about the product -- a brand that can only be successful through a combination of user adoption and a generous marketing budget.
Just bing it?
Is Bing a good brand? The name certainly seems designed to create a counterweight to the Google name and brand. Does Microsoft expect people to say "just bing it"? Do they expect users to "google it with bing"? With enough money and resources, almost any brand from a major industry player, no matter how much sense it makes or whether seemingly relevant, can gain reasonable traction. Microsoft can certainly establish some relevance and mindshare given the budget it is willing to devote to the cause, but does it make the most sense? The obvious alternative, of course, is a more pragmatic brand (Microsoft Search). So are they just burning cash promoting the Bing name? The answer to that question often depends on what school of branding you currently attend.
Unique or Pragmatic: Both can succeed
Being in a brand name (or logo or color) selection meeting is in many ways as frustrating and time consuming as choosing a child's name. And the result is often the same -- significant parties consulted during the effort and many of those who hear of it later think you made the wrong choice. Everyone has an opinion, and while some are based on time-tested methodologies and others rely on the the latest brand creation mindset, often times the result is determined by less scientific means.
Even when leveraging focus groups, the decision will still often hinge on a "golden gut." From personal experience, some decent names are simply rejected because they don't work for senior staff. Why is your child not named Dave? Because Dave was the name of the boy that your wife hated in middle school. Why is the product not X? Because it reminds the CTO of a previous experience or some faulty product, perhaps in an entirely different industry. Anyone with experience in these matters can offer up their own colorful anecdotes of why something that made sense was shot down by a C-level company officer.
So let's look at the two primary schools of thought:
- The "unique separates you from the competition" school. Branding experts often advise companies to select a name that is unique (Bing), that can become associated with a product through intense marketing, but that cannot be copied (Google). Google obviously created meaning out of nothing, as did Amazon. RIM has had an incredibly successful run with its Blackberry phones, despite the name not implying anything about communication or enterprise-class management features. And Palm has been generating a lot of attention with its upcoming Pre phone.
Note: Of all those mentioned, that last name seems the worst. Pre sounds like a prefix of something, not an actual thing, It will also be a much harder term for successful search engine optimization (SEO). - The "pragmatic looks boring but gets results" school. Some of the most successful brands recently have had more pragmatic (or descriptive) names that at least in some small way relate to the actual product function or look. Apple's iPhone, iPod, and MacBook names somewhat describe their product -- it takes just a moment to figure out the connections. The choice of PlayStation by Sony is easy to understand. Microsoft's Windows is very obvious, while Xbox is at least somewhat self-explanatory (and it has an "x" in it, which was Microsoft's answer to Apples "i" everything). The names salesforce and openoffice are pretty self-evident, while it is impossible to misunderstand what the Oracle Database is about.
A look at some of Microsoft's erratic branding behavior
It is ironic that for years the computer industry has been trying to emulate the branding success of the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry. Steve Ballmer, the current CEO of Microsoft, worked for a short time at CPG powerhouse Proctor & Gamble (P&G), often held up as the gold standard of consumer branding. But Microsoft's recent branding missteps seem to illustrate that the company and its CEO have not become anything like the branding and brand management powerhouse of P&G.
To understand the company's branding issues, let's look at some of the recent Microsoft branding efforts.
- Unique names (long-term success unknown):
Bing: Microsoft's re-branded and enhanced search service is touted as a "Decision Engine" by the company, similar in claim to Wolfram Alpha's recently released "computational knowledge engine" service (try it out here), but very different in execution. Microsoft's made-up name seems to connote an offering from a hip Silicon Valley startup. Just a day ago it was called Live Search. Bing is trying to catch up to Google search in terms of use, and thus search advertising revenue (read the Microsoft release here for some official positioning).
It is too early to gauge the success of the name, but the simple fact that it is Microsoft's primary online search tool means that it will not fail.
Zune: The Zune is the name of a family of Microsoft offerings centered around buying, managing, and playing digital content, such as music and movies. It is similar in scope in many ways to Apple's iPod, iPhone, Mac, and iTunes Store ecosystem, except that the Zune name is carried across the product line. Unlike the iPod or even iTunes names, the Zune name has no relation to anything it does or is about. The recent announcement of the iPod touch-like Zune HD -- where the HD stands for high definition, but in this case radio, not video -- demonstrates the problems with this branding effort. Consumers are likely to confuse the product for a high-end video device (thought the screen is improved). In addition, the brand is being extended to the Xbox world as a content store, making it hard to understand the various stores, devices, and services.
At this point, the Zune brand has not had a tremendous amount of success due to the lackluster sales of its music/video devices. The Xbox link may help, but Zune seems to be a case of choosing a unique name and then force-fitting it into too many places while simultaneously having it clash with other successful brands (Xbox). The results and confusion seem not worth the effort. - Names close to function/product (mixed bag of results):
Silverlight: This is Microsoft's answer to Adobe's Flash. Its name makes sense when compared to the competition (light versus flash). The name seems fine, but the product's big challenges are not only unseating the dominant Flash, but also fending off emerging Web standards, such as embedded video support that is coming with HTML 5. Given the renewed browser wars (Internet Explorer versus Firefox versus Safari) and the emphasis on compatibility with standards, Silverlight, name not withstanding, will have a tough time gaining traction.
Azure Services: Azure is the cloud service offering by Microsoft. The name is a bit confusing, as it describes the color of the sky (blue) and not the color of a cloud, but it it is close enough to make sense -- and it is a real word so it is easy to digest. Azure's problem is the competition. It competes with existing services such as Amazon's EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud). EC2 is an interesting name, as its acronym appeals to technophiles, while its name says exactly what it is about. But Microsoft, which has been so successful driving its server products into organizations and hosting companies, will most likely find, at the very least, relative success.
Xbox: More edgy than PlayStation, but, like the iPod name, the Xbox moniker is related to what it does. It is a game console -- a box for playing games. And no doubt the "x" in the name was not only chosen to line up with other Microsoft x-names, but also because of its suggestion of the X Games, popular with the same demographic as hardcore console gaming. The 360 name (the original console was called the Xbox; the second-generation is called the Xbox 360) is believed to have been in response to the "3" in the PlayStation name (while the Xbox console was only in its second iteration, it would sound like it was in the same league as the PlayStation 3). This name has been an unqualified success. The only issue will be how Xbox and Zune are used together.
Others: MSN, while out of style, was built to compete with AOL, another three-letter acronym. The name made sense, but MSN is no longer the focus of most consumer branding from Microsoft. C#, the name for a Microsoft computer programming language, also makes sense -- it is an enhanced version of the C++ programming language and is designed to take on Java. Microsoft Exchange, the company's email system, is another name that is close to what it does and is also easy to remember.
There are a variety of other successful names in this category, including Word, PowerPoint, and Access. - Pragmatic names (very successful):
Windows 7: Windows is perhaps the ultimate example of successful pragmatic/descriptive naming. Replacing Windows Vista, a name that placed half the brand in the "unique" category, Windows 7 is about as obvious and as easy as possible to grasp. Now, if knocking Microsoft for Vista, you could perhaps knock Apple for its cat names for its operating systems (currently Leopard, previously Jaguar). One could argue the cat names trump the purely descriptive name of Vista, but both have their issues. However, Apple customers are used to creative branding -- many relish the old Apple slogan "Think Different" -- while Microsoft caters to a large base of PC users who just want a functional machine. For the majority of business and consumer users, pragmatism is the way to go.
Internet Explorer 8: While it has a history of not being standards-compatible, Internet Explorer (IE) is a well-known brand and on par in terms of ease of understanding as other Microsoft names, such as Windows and Office. The biggest issue with the name is that the vast majority of PC users may not even know it -- they simply think of it as the Windows Web browser. Browser competitors have more colorful names (e.g., Firefox, Safari, and Opera), but they have to fight an uphill battle to even get installed on PCs. Most consumers just don't care about browsers. So, IE, while a good name, also wins by default for most computer users.
Windows Media: Windows Media Player is an interesting name, because while not as catching as iTunes, it is more accurate. iTunes started off life (from the SoundJam acquisition) as a Mac-based music manager and player, but has since become a dual-platform player and manager for podcasts, TV shows, movies, and everything in between, as well as the interface for the iTunes Store and the hub for syncing iPods and iPhones. In fact, Apple felt compelled to change the name of the iTunes Music Store to the iTunes Store, and, even today, video and other content for iTunes is filed under a top-level music folder. In contrast. Media Player 11's name still holds true. As with IE, though, since it is the default software on PCs, many consumer don't even know its name.
Other names in this category include Microsoft Office and Virtual Earth. - Names that dilute (largely unsuccessful and damaging to existing, powerful brands):
.NET: .NET wasn't a bad name - it falls into category No. 2 or perhaps 3 - but it was abused and tacked on to everything (eventually to be separated after much confusion). .NET lives on successfully, but in a much more contained world.
Live: Like with .NET (and Active before it), Microsoft marketers attempted to apply one label to many diverse online services. The worst practice was combing an existing, well understood product name with Live no matter how different from the offline version. The initial Windows Live name and product had this problem.
Windows: Yes, Windows was noted as a success above. But while desktop and server Windows is an excellent brand name, it has been applied to so many products that it is hard to understand what it means anymore. It's really any operating system the company produces. Compare that to Apple, which makes Mac OS and the iPhone OS.
All this divergent branding can catch up. For example, the text of the login page for Windows Live services shows how erratic the naming can be: "One Windows Live ID gets you into Hotmail, Messenger, Xbox LIVE." So you have Windows Live as a top level brand, based off a successful product but that does not equal a "live" version of that product. Then you have Hotmail, a pragmatic and colorful holdover name; Messenger, a pragmatic and non-creative name; and Xbox LIVE, a strange combination that capitalizes live when services on the same page don't! It seems like no one is in charge some times.
Branding is expensive and branding mistakes are costly and embarrassing
Unique names are very expensive to market if a company wants a dramatic, global launch, as Microsoft is doing with Bing (they can gain traction slowly and with minimal cost, as Google did, if a company has patience). Every new brand requires marketing dollars, but unique ones require additional dollars to create a now non-existant connection with an unrelated service/product. Bing and Zune are both expensive and still unproven brands despite tens of millions (or more) spent on marketing programs.
Certainly there are places for both the unique and pragmatic brand. The obvious split is between consumer services and business offerings. However, when you have a product like search, there is no clear market split. By choosing the more consumer-friendly approach, Microsoft has chosen to take on market leading Google with a similar name. The selection can be seen as copying and weak. In reality, Microsoft Search should be enough, and Bing, in fact, doesn't even present itself at this point with much Microsoft branding. So in the end, even if Bing is successful, how does that relate to elevating the company brand (something Microsoft was very interested in doing with its advertising campaign last year)?
Few will agree on whether the branding effort for Bing was correct -- at least not until more than a year has passed. However, in a time of declining profits and revenue (year-over-year; see the official release here) -- the first ever, reported last quarter -- expensive, unique branding like Bing may be a course Microsoft might reconsider for its next major launch or product overhaul.
By: Tom Rhinelander
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