14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has gone back in time and managed to discover an excellent marketing resource. As you can see from the adjacent image, a young Bill Gates is advertising Microsoft's Beginner Developer Learning Center. This is a strategic marketing approach and it should have been used for the Windows Vista Wow.
Bill Gates is the face of Microsoft. Sure, he co-founded Microsoft with Paul Allen; but to the world, Microsoft is synonym with Bill Gates. That aspect in itself is a resource worth exploiting. Bill Gates at the forefront of Microsoft's business will personalize the company and will give it a consumer-oriented feeling. Microsoft by itself is a mammoth target. Attacks are easy to come by and they are often simply gratuitous.
Would Bill Gates be able to change that? Just consider the impact that the Visual Studio advertisement is delivering to beginning developers. Bill Gates is not pitching a product but a dream. A dream that could take virtually anyone to the position of the most wealthy man in the world.
Reality doesn't need to set in, and Microsoft's Beginner Developer Learning Center together with a free copy of Visual Studio Express Edition is a good place to start. Still, isn't such a marketing strategy revealed too late?
Bill Gates is currently in a transition phase and as of July 2008, he will step down from his day to day role with the Redmond Company to dedicate himself to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and its philanthropic work. Former Chief Technical Officer Ray Ozzie has already become Microsoft's Chief Software Architect and together with Chief Technical Officer Craig Mundie will fill in the gap left by Bill Gates. As of July 2008, Ozzie, Mundie and Ballmer will be at the head of the Redmond Company.
