Tag Archives: Microsoft

Brand Strategy, Portfolio

Mircosoft goes back to the future with renewed focus on productivity

It took a while, but slowly but surely Microsoft is becoming the company that truly stands for productivity.

Microsoft is going to make real strides in translating the brand into products and propositions and become again the company that stands for productivity; exactly as we came to know it.

After all, productivity is where the brand started for the masses. Think of the IBM PC with MS-DOS, first used in the business environment.

With the introduction of Windows and Office, it was, of course, completely clear: the combination in the workplace and synonyms for productivity.

Even the competition recognized this positioning. Apple made some jokes about PCs and PC users in its Mac vs PC ad, but deep down it was a character sketch of creative versus productive. This is also exactly the difference between the Office Suite and the Apple iWork Suite. One is focused on productivity, the other primarily on creativity.

Now it is clear again to Microsoft itself what the core of the company is. In an email, ceo Satya Nadella says that “at our core, Microsoft is the productivity and platform company for the mobile-first and cloud-first world. We will reinvent productivity to empower every person and every organization on the planet to do more and achieve more.’

The recent repositioning of the Surface tablets towards productivity is already a great example. In 2012, the Surface was launched as ‘a laptop in a tablet form’. Very inconvenient when the obvious trend is that the number of laptops is decreasing. In addition, the Surface had all sorts of problems such as a sky-high price (nota bene more expensive than a laptop with touch), moderate battery consumption and lack of applications. Due to its unclear positioning, the Surface was compared unfavorably to iPad, the #1 in the tablet category.

The new Surface website now provides more clarity. A translation of the brand into propositions is visible. I read ‘Surface – the most productive tablets on the world’. Of course this could have been even sharper, for example ‘Surface – the first tablet focused on productivity’ with a headline like ‘finally, a tablet that can replace your laptop’. But the beginning is there.

Now that Microsoft’s core is crystal clear, it needs to make a clear choice and then, of course, go for it. The recent news of 18,000 job cuts will certainly contribute to this. For example, how does the Xbox gaming platform fit with productivity? How does Nokia phones’ focus on their photographic capabilities fit with productivity?

If the brand is truly providing direction, then the character or values of the brand can be used as a compass. Creating and executing branded products & propositions then becomes easier. And consumers understand exactly what you do and-importantly-how you make a difference.

This article was published in Adformatie (Dutch).

General

How iA Writer is reintroducing the word processor category

Something amazing happened last May when a company called Information Architects  released the Mac version of iA Writer, “a digital writing tool that makes sure that all your thoughts go into the text instead of the program.”.

Why is this is amazing? Well, iA Writer just entered the word processor category traditionally dominated by Microsoft Word and Apple Pages. Both Word and Pages are of course expected to do… well… lot’s of word processing…!

A closer look at the propositions of Microsoft Word and Apple Pages reveals that while these products in a distant past might have been about word processing today they are clearly about something else.

When looking at the Microsoft Word website the browser bar still says “Word 2010 – Document and Word Processing Software – Office.com” but in reality the focus of Word today is more on desktop publishing, as Microsoft says Word is “More than words”.

“More than words” is made possible through 3 sub propositions, none of them about word processing:

There you have it… Word 2010… bye bye word processing, hello to desktop publishing!

Over at Apple with Pages the situation is very much the same. The promise of Pages is to be “both a streamlined word processor and an easy-to-use page layout tool. It allows you to be a writer one minute and a designer the next, always with a perfect document in the works.”

There is a bit more word processing going on here but the end conclusion is the same: bye bye word processing, hello to desktop publishing!

While Microsoft Word and Apple Pages have left the word processor category and are moving into the desktop publishing category the move made room for new entrants: hello iA Writer!

What is iA Writer doing? Well, it simply is a 100% word processor. “One of our goals was to create a writing app without settings. When opening Writer, all you can do is write. The only option you have is full screen and FocusMode. To increase the pleasure of writing is exactly what we intended when creating Writer. A better tool doesn’t make a better craftsman, but a good tool makes working a pleasure.”

All of this supported by three propositions:

Yes, iA Writer looks a lot like… a word processor:

iA Writer has 8 key features: 1. Auto markdown; 2. Professional Typography; 3. Spell Check; 4. Words & Character Count; 5. Reading Time; 6. Focus Mode; 7. Disappearing Bar; 8. iCloud compatible

Amazing isn’t it? A product build upon 8 key features to deliver … a product that is really optimized for writing. While most of the 8 key features look familiar and can be achieved in e.g. Word there are four things that make the product stand out and differentiate:

  1. It is a true word processor, the only thing it does is … word processing and everything is optimized for that.
  2. No additional features included:  the creators of iA Writer were able to resist and keep focus
  3. Typography, designed by “the best type, screen and graphic designers in the industry”. Of course it makes a difference to look at something beautiful when writing something even more beautiful
  4. Focus mode: this is the real differentiator: in Focus mode all the text fades out except for the sentence you are working on so you can, well… focus.

The result of delivering a focused product is pretty stunning: iA Writer is a top 10 app in the productivity category on the Apple App Store. Even more stunning since in this category the top 4 apps are Apple products, including Pages ranked 2.

Furthermore the consumer ratings are high: 4.5 stars with lots of raving reviews with titles like “an app I didn’t know I wanted”, “Professional Writers, Rejoice” and “Insanely gorgeous”.

So here you have it: when companies or products leave the category in which they originally entered it leaves space for new entrants, even in the word processor category that I never thought would be such an exciting category! How wrong I was!

iA Writer shows us that when you focus your product in a category occupied by “do it all” products you do get noticed and can reintroduce the category to consumers. Well done iA Writer!

Mac owners: get iA Writer on iTunes