José Ignacio Gafo Gómez-Zamalloa

You have probably heard about it before, but I cannot stop myself from writing about this Microsoft initiative to revive an improved product + reinforce its brand image.

In general, the first versions of any software are full of problems and bugs. This is specially the case in competitive scenarios and Microsoft is not an exception to this. Windows Vista had had several delays and the company could not delay its launch any more. Thus they launched a version of Vista that had more than acceptable bugs and received very strong critics from everywhere. The situation reached to a point where even the PC manufacturers where reluctant to bundle their products with this software!

The time went on and Microsoft was able to solve most of the bugs the product suffered. The situation was then tricky because the software was working really well but had a terrible image. What could they do?

They could have launched a new product (which would have been safe and incredibly expensive), but they opted for a Brand Revival Strategy called the Mojave Experiment.

The Mojave Experiment consisted mainly on taking all their Vista critics, make them use what was presented to them as a new operating system and get their feedback. These critics had no idea that they were actually analyzing the revived Vista and gave an objective + very positive feedback on the “new” product! Making them think that they were dealing with a new product, Microsoft demonstrated that the non-bugged version was up to their expectations.

As you can imagine, all these focus groups were recorded and Microsoft made sure that everybody knew about it (go to www.mojaveexperiment.com for more info) through viral campaigns. Interesting thing that the experiment was very reliable, for it was promoted by its worst critics!.

Will it be enough to revive the product? Hard to say but no doubt that The Mojave Experiment + virality effects are doing a great job.

Think Different!!!

Ignacio Gafo

Posted on 12 September 2008 in Product Management, International Marketing

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