Microsoft is paying attention to “the way the world is going,” according to Rob Reilly, an executive at the Boulder, Colorade advertising firm that created the clever “I’m a PC” campaign in 2008 and now has added the phrase “…and Windows 7 was my idea.”
What, exactly, is that “way”? Listening to consumers. As we point out in Chapter 3, the age of “at” advertising has given way to “with” advertising. We are smarter and more informed than earlier generations of consumers. A 2008 Pew Internet survey found that half of us go online to research future purchases. Mostly though, we talk with each other–nearly two-thirds of the products in the world are sold by word of mouth. No suprise there, when you consider that 14% of our everday conversation centers on things we buy and services we use. Companies should listen to us, because we’re no longer listening to them.
As Reilly explained in The Billion Designers of Windows 7, “It’s about how software for the people is now software for the people and by the people.” The New York Times article also points out that Microsoft has a history of listening to consumers. Indeed, they’re simply continuing to do what most savvy companies today have to do: see themselves as “co-creators” with consumers.
Not surprisingly, the ad agency also decide to cast “real people” in the campaign–not experts or actors. You could say–and I certainly would–that Microsoft values its consequential strangers. That is “the way”–the new tao of business.
