Susanne Dansey’s Blog

… it’s a lot harder in real life!

Darren Strange posted about The Enchanted Office cartoon strip which I then showed to Vlad. Vlad decided to post in his usual way on this and on some similar MotherShip advertising campaigns. I wouldn’t use the words he did, but I think he has a point.

Whilst advertising campaigns are great when viewed internally by the powers that be, I do think that a little bit of spending the marketing pot in ways that will actually help partners sell would go a lot further than it does now. Training and regional launch events that involve partners have worked well in the US and building on the back of these successes surely makes more sense.

Captain Campaign is a great idea in theory and I hope that many more partners will take the time to look at what is and has been available to them. However, my thinking is, that if partners haven’t found it yet, are they going to have the time to keep checking back now that it has been re-dressed in new clothing? Other partners who have chatted to me about it are not sure whether it’s on the verge of patronising - either way, I hope MS achieve their goals and objectives with it.

The most effective form of marketing so far from Microsoft their ability to proactively blog. In the UK, the partner team (i.e. PTS and Steve) do a great job and communicating on a regular basis, the Vista (i.e Matt and James) and Office (i.e. Darren and Allister) evangelists also pass on their genuine enthusiasm. If an application makes their lives better, they’ll blog about it. Fighting Inertia with the power of that bloomin’ Clippy is not and will not be how we get our clients understanding the real value of new ’stuff’.

For me, face to face interaction at events such as the Small Business Specialist Symposium in February because partners will be involved and help shape its success. This shouldl give a bigger ROI to those involved compared to a marketing programme that doesn’t engage with partners enough and makes us wonder how much was spent on it. More time on the ‘ground’ with partners is what’s needed and at all times the right R&D should be done before any campaign is launched to the masses.