ON WINDOWS LIVE AS A BRANDING CONDIMENT

LIVE WITH ANTICIPATION

I had to shake my head reading this re-branding exercise from Microsoft, as announced in a breathless blog post on the Microsoft Live Mail website:

"When we launch the mail service worldwide, it will be named Windows Live Hotmail. That’s right!"

Michael Arrington has a post comparing Hotmail, excuse me Windows Live Hotmail, with Yahoo! Mail and Google's Gmail.  And it's not clear what the words "Windows Live" brings to the Hotmail of old in terms of features.

It seems Microsoft has been liberally applying the "Windows Live" label to almost every piece of software or service it finds lying about in the shop.  Everything from Microsoft Office to Microsoft Messenger to MSN Search has had the "Windows Live" moniker slapped in front of it.

It's almost as if "Windows Live" has become the branding equivalent of ketchup for Microsoft. 

They seem to be convinced that it goes with anything, and that consumers will find it makes old stuff taste better.

It'd all be fine, except that the company is apparently spending a fair chunk of change doing this.  As CNET explains:

"Microsoft has invested billions of dollars in creating the Windows Live brand, separating the free, online consumer Internet services like e-mail and instant messaging from its MSN brand and building its own search engine and paid search platform from scratch."

As a shareholder, the Windows Live branding exercise reminds me of the Carly Simon song "Anticipation", which was used effectively by Heinz in it's classic ketchup commercial in the 1970s. 

While we're waiting to see if the Windows Live strategy pays off however, THIS 15 second ketchup clip on YouTube made me think of the current state of affairs with Windows Live on various Microsoft products and services:

Appropriate, don't you think?

Comments

[Stefan Ventura]

I agree that it's strange. The strangest thing is MSN Messenger, which is known to many as "MSN". It's now "Windows Live Messenger", retaining none of the name under which it became known. "Windows Live Search" was known simply as "Live.com", but apparently had to have a longer name. Hotmail has been branded just about every combination possible of Hotmail, MSN, Passport, and Live. But people still call it "Hotmail".

PS. I constructed a chart of how Hotmail’s name has developed during the eleven years since its launch:

http://ventura.wordpress.com/2007/02/09/by-2018-hotmail-will-have-a-59-letter-name/

To have an effective brand means you need a strategy for creating value. Microsoft could do that in the 1990's, but can't do that now. It sits atop too many conflicts. The "Windows Live" stuff is really just promiscuous labeling. There's no brand there.