The other day I read an article about “Microsoft Surface sales numbers revealed as SHOCKINGLY HIDEOUS” which explained that Microsoft sold the Surface tablets for some $853 million in revenue while, at the same time they spent $1 bn in marketing!
Ouch!
While I could go about Microsoft trying to build things they don’t know anything about (similar to Google trying to build a social network) the real problem here is the perception of the quality of the product. The brand Microsoft is associated with the crappiest piece of software ever written, full of bugs, patches, security problems etc.
If I was leading Microsoft, I would first invest $1 bn (a gigantic sum of money, no doubt) in optimizing my development processes, started to actually ship products and software that work (heck even gave it away for free) to try to fix the perception of my company before investing anything into marketing. IMO only crappy products need a lot of marketing (take Coca-Cola for example).
Good products do not need advertising, people find them.
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