14 DAY TRIAL // Last week, Microsoft announced various enhancements for its Windows Azure platform, such as a set of new services and overall improvements meant to make the life of developers much easier than before.
The company was very happy with the changes it brought to its cloud-based platform – so happy, in fact, that it took the stage at the Norwegian Developers Conference last week to talk about them.
Apparently, people in the company’s Marketing team considered it fit to celebrate the announcement with a song and an accompanying dance as well, to lighten up the spirits at said conference.
All this was supposed to be a nice, entertaining presentation, but it managed to become a huge fiasco, as someone from Microsoft PR included inappropriate words in the aforementioned song, which was performed live on stage at the event.
A video showing the performance of the “Windows Azure girls” made it to YouTube fast, and it can be seen embedded at the bottom of this article.
In a comment to that clip, Microsoft apologized for the offensive words used in the song, and it also stated that it was investigating the issue.
“This week’s Norwegian Developer’s Conference included a skit that involved inappropriate and offensive elements and vulgar language. We apologize to our customers and our partners and are actively looking into the matter,” the company said.
Moreover, Frank X. Shaw, lead corporate communications for Microsoft, took it to his Twitter account to categorize the whole “show” as inappropriate.
“This routine had vulgar language, was inappropriate and was just not ok. We apologize to our customers and partners,” he tweeted.
Of course, this is not the first time when PR initiatives go wrong, but it appears that things were taken a bit too far this time. Most probably, the incident will result in a series of layoffs among Microsoft’s employees responsible with the marketing of its products.
