This is a great video to promote Internet Explorer 7. I wish they would put it on TV since I think people would laugh so hard! It also does a great job not showing the product, which is exactly what so many companies do these days. Hype up the brand/name, and deliver something new and usable. Anyway you can watch it in WMV format, or click below to watch it via YouTube.

You have got a plethorea of services that start with “Windows Live”:  Windows Live Messenger (WLM), Windows Live Mail (WLM) [wait, which one is WLM?!], Windows Live Local (WLL), Windows Live Safety Center (WLSC), Windows Live Expo (WLE), Windows Live Favorites (WLF), Windows Live Search (WLS).  Then there is another set of “Live” services: Windows Office Live (WOL) and Windows OneCare Live (WOCL or WOL).  But the worst came today when I found out about the new Windows Live Local Search Free Call (WLLSFC).

At a company with over 60,000 employees, and a committee could ruin much of the work they do by making a huge mistake in naming.  I don’t mind getting rid of MSN, which has a slow, clunky, non-innovative history attached to it.  I understand that the naming works with the new organizational structure, but it makes no sense to the consumer to add extra words or letters. 

Why not make MSN into just Live?  Live Messenger, Live Mail, Live Search, Live Local.  You could even play off it for advertising Live (change it to live as in living).  They could do something even better, and get a whole new word/letter/phrase similar to “i” in iPod and iTunes.  Branding is a huge pain and I think they are digging a hole with the new naming pattern.  People can hardly tell what services are without long names like “Windows Live Local Search Free Call”.  That is an absurdly long name, which could have been called Live Search Connectoid.  I am partial to the word “connectoid” because I think it sounds interesting and unusual.  Microsoft is trying to continue domination of the desktop by keeping the word Windows as a top buzz word.  I think they are excluding users of Apple or Linux platforms who can easily access the Web 2.0 software being used.

When Lucent spun the Enterprise Networks Group out in 2000 it had to come up with a name.  They picked Avaya, pronounced uhv-EYE-uh, because it would set them apart and capture what they were doing.  Google was a made up word that came from the word googol, the digit 1 followed by one hundred zeros. Yahoo! is an acronym for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle” and the founders liked the definition of “rude, unsophisticated, uncouth”.  Red Hat came from a lost Cornell lacrosse team cap (with red and white stripes).  Cisco is short for San Francisco, Intel came from INTegrated ELectronics and HoTMaiL as it was originally spelled was constructed with the letters HTML, which were used to create the web-based software.

What do you think of this new naming scheme from Microsoft?  How would you change it?

PS: I do really like the name Microsoft, and it would have been nice to see them stick that back in.  They have made great software.  I know the name has had a bad reputation with games, but the Xbox has changed that around and given birth to Microsoft Game Studios. 

The world’s largest, most important sporting event is happening this summer. Are you ready? That’s right, coming this June from Germany is the World Cup. The best 32 nations will gather to battle over soccer supremacy in front of a television audience in the billions. To get you ready to cheer on the red white and blue check out the video below made by one of the US team’s rising star, Clint Dempsey. Thats right a rapping soccer player, and you know what I must admit the beat is kind of catchy. Alright, alright it’s a bit cheesy but I can’t get enough of it, call it a guilty pleasure. Whatever you do prepare for a great summer of soccer and click below to get on the bandwagon.

Check out this music video Nike put together for its Women’s clothing line. I am very impressed with Nike’s use of the latest technology. Def Jam artist Rihanna has launched her latest music video “SOS” on nikewomen.com. If you go to Nike.com this video begins to play automatically and if you click will play full screen high res. Also Nike has it set up so that you can download the video in multiple formats, email and blog it all from an easy drop down menu. You can also one click to buy or interact with the video. All very cool use of flash technology. Nike is a marketing, technology and design firm now more than an athletic provider and they are on the leading edge of many many trends. Check out the video below or click through for the full experience

Click Here to View the QuickTime Movie

Yup, today Phil woke up from his long winter slumber yesterday, and there’s all sorts of exciting stuff going on. Supposedly there are now multiple rodents (is a groundhog a rodent?) that people observe to determine how many more weeks of winter we are going to get. Isn’t this a strange tradition? According to one site, there are 34 other groundhogs with the same occupation, including a llama and a chicken.

How much money do you think is made off of this non-event? I mean a groundhog sticking its head out of a hole is watched by more than 12,000 people and covered all over the national news (2,020 articles written according to Google, with this one as 2,021), there has to be someone making money off this. In fact, one of the websites I linked to above is actually called Committee for the Commercialization of Groundhog Day. How do you calculate how much money is made though? How about in the media? I’d be willing to bet that hundreds of thousands of dollars of advertising revenue are made through all the advertising that accompanies news segments and articles about Phil and his fellow weather forecasting rodent competitors.

Other notable organizations that seem interested in the commercialization of this chubby-bellied, big-toothed creature include the PA Tourism Office and the Bill Murray film Groundhog Day. Know of any others?

Oh by the way, the original, Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow… and you know what that means!

Nike is at it again with their new “Secret Boot Room” promotion. Using their very cool nikeid technology the new program will allow consumers to purchase the boots (for those of you who don’t speak euro that means soccer cleats) that star players are wearing. They are letting players pick out any colors they want and then through this program they are making them available to the public. By limiting the production runs of each boot they are adding exclusivity to the mix, which is always a good way to get soccer moms around the country to run for their credit cards! It is very cool to see Nike expanding thier use of Nikeid technology to not only allow users to create shoes to their liking but also as a marketing technique to target specific customers with special shoe offers. I could very easily see this technology expanding into other product lines, and I am suprised that other companies are jumping on this technology. If you know of anybody doing something similar tell us about it so that we can test it out and report back.

I have ordered a couple of things from NikeID and it works great check out Nikeid for yourself: Cool Shoes!

This is kind of old news, but does anyone else think this whole AT&T/SBC advertising blitz is dumb? Or have you seen an ad about the AT&T/SBC merger and thought, “well great, why should I care?!” They seem to be promising big things as can be summed up in their “Your World. Delivered.” tag line. What does that mean?! What from my world are you going to deliver to me? AT&T’s homepage says “[the two companies] have come together to create the most complete and secure network, delivering what matters most in your world.” That sounds great and all, but what are they going to actually deliver? I look at the two companies as providers of commodities in a super-competitive market with no major differentiators from the other suppliers of the commodity.

Here’s an example pointed out by Sean Coon. See the billboard to the right? Yeah, now check out the screen shot from AT&T’s website below.

A+ for those in charge of executing this marketing vision, but those in charge of creating it and making sure what the company is doing actually matches its marketing messages should be fired.

Moreover, they are spending $1 billion on this ad campaign. I could see plenty more useful ways to spend a billion dollars then by firing ambiguous advertising off at every eyeball in America. How about spending that cash on achieving these epic ambiguous goals they are promising?

Update: Joseph Jaffe over at JaffeJuice has posted about the same thing, and has said it quite nicely too.

How many ways can your company get its brand in front the eyes of the public? Tons. Well, according to many blogs out there Target has thought of a new and unique way by taking advantage of aerial mapping services such as Google Maps and MSN’s Virtualearth. Apparently they’ve emblazoned the top of one of their buildings with their logo so that map service users get a little Target brand exposure as they view a location or directions in the general vicinity of the building.

That’s a great idea, and I would commend Target for coming up with it… but when you zoom out a few clicks you find a large airport nearby. Oh that’s Chicago’s O’Hare airport. Considering that and the fact that the imagery is probably at least 2 years old, this logo was definitely meant to be seen by passengers on flights departing from or arriving at O’Hare. I wonder if they ever get helicopters mistakenly landing on their roof?!

Bonus brand exposure for Target though. As I am sure the quality of aerial photography that is publicly available on these sites will continue to improve, I wonder if this will become a trend? Check out the Ford logo and the United Airlines logo as other examples.