Today's WORD is Injunction

Today we learned that a US court has issued an injunction preventing Microsoft from selling uber-popular Office stalwart WORD after mid-January because the product violates patents held by others. Yikes! I would suspect that large sums of money will change hands prior to that date if MS can't get another ruling from another court overturning the injunction (perhaps they should appeal to the Brazilian Supreme Court). One way or another, I doubt that WORD is in any real, lasting jeopardy.

But the case does illustrate a problem that many marketers face from time to time. What do you do when your company management either breaks the law or does something unethical as part of its business practices? Just apologize, say oops and promise it won't happen again? But in Microsoft's case, it happens a lot. How can the MS marketers overcome this self-inflicted, never ending assault on the company rep?

Microsoft's current ad campaign depicting customers as saying they invented the new Windows doesn't really square with reality, assuming that their customers aren't unethical or anticompetitive or patent poachers. We are not Them. How closely do prospective customers want to align themselves with a supplier that's always in trouble? (Aside: Hey Microsoft, do you mean to tell us that in spite of a gajillion developers on your payroll WE have to come up with all the ideas? Maybe you need to pay us instead of the other way around?).

Microsoft is not a company led by marketers, clearly. The Sherman tank that is Steve Ballmer has never seemed overly interested in such vagueries as marketing. But if he were, he might take a bit more care with the company's very fragile rep and stop making it quite so hard for marketers to do their jobs. Then again, these are the guys who thought the Jerry Seinfeld commercials were a riot. Ugh. How did these guys come to dominate the world again?