Microsoft is now working with a new company to handle the digital consumer marketing of the company’s Surface product line, which obviously includes the Surface RT and Surface Pro. Will that lead to better Surface commercials or more people dancing around?
After nearly a one billion dollar write down and poor sales of the Surface line of products, Microsoft does not seem ready to abandon their efforts in making the Surface a successful and attractive product to consumers. With constant improvement on both the software and service side and a recently-announced expansion of commercial distribution, the devices and services giant is now working to improvement the digital consumer marketing aspect of the Surface with a new marketing company.
According to post from the AdAge|Digital, Microsoft has chosen a marketing company called Razorfish to handle the digital consumer marketing for the Surface RT and it bigger sibling the Surface Pro. “Now Microsoft has tapped Publicis Groupe’s Razorfish to handle digital consumer marketing for both Surface and its Windows operating system as the brands move into holiday-planning mod,” says the post.
In fact, the two companies are already working conjointly on other products such as the software giant’s gaming console, the Xbox, and the company’s web search service, Bing. Since there aren’t many commercials for these product besides the seldom online commercials, it is really hard to judge the quality of work of Razorfish.
According the same post, Microsoft’s decision to terminate their contract with R/GA, the previous marketing company that used to handle the digital consumer marketing for the software giant, is partly due to a recent collaboration the marketing company made with Samsung. “The decision to switch digital online advertising agencies arose due to competitive conflicts with the previous agency,” the post mentions according to a Microsoft spokesperson.
In a way, the change in marking teams will introduce better commercials that will focus on the actual features of both the Surface products. This is definitely a welcome move. Since the Surface debuted, the commercials that have been aired have not done an efficient job of showing what the Surface is actually capable of doing in comparison to other products such as the iPad.
There is no doubt the success that Microsoft envisioned for the Surface line of products is nowhere near of what they expected to be. Nonetheless, the on-going effort of the devices and services giant to make the Surface more attractive with a lower price tag, an expansion of the commercial distribution to new markets, and now the change of the company that handles the digital consumer marketing, the Surface will hopefully be conducive to more consumer adaptation.
