True Business- real life for small businesses

I wanted to share with you this piece of excellent PR work (which I found on the excellent Robert Scoble’s technology blog).

Declaration of interest: This blog is sponsored by Microsoft

Let me give you the story first, and then I’ll tell you why I think it’s a piece of genius.

Microsoft has produced a super-smart website to promote the Windows Vista operating system. Called the “Mojave Experiment”- click to see it- the site is a simple video. In the video, members of the public are first shown making negative comments about Vista. They may never even have used Vista, but their comments are based largely on the preconceptions that arise whenever a giant corporation launches a new product under massive press scrutiny.

The participants then get a chance to play with “Mojave”, the code-name for what is supposedly Microsoft’s next operating system after Vista. We see their amazed reactions at Mojave’s impressive functions and features.

Then, rather like the denouement of a magic show, or the twist in the tail of a film, the participants find out that what they have actually been playing with is… Windows Vista.

It’s a great video- really well produced and very smart. Click the link above to see it.

Now, let’s take a look at why it’s clever.

Firstly, it’s created a wave of interest from the technology community. That alone is worth its weight in gold: it’s created bags of PR from bloggers like me.

Secondly, it’s a piece of work which has precisely done its job. Companies like Microsoft, McDonalds, Airbus, or Glaxo SmithKline live slap-bang in the public eye. Their product launches are almost guaranteed to be shot down by someone, whether the naysayer’s motivations are political, financial, social or emotional. Rather than trying to prevent negative perceptions of their product from getting out, Microsoft have realised that the global availability of information makes that sort of protectionism impossible. Instead, they have tackled the negative perception head-on, with incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, in an elegant and engaging way.

I’m pretty sure that the age of total PR control within corporations is over. Instead, it’s smart answers like this which have the power to genuinely change minds.

Filed under: current affairs, marketing, technology | Tagged: business, business skills, marketing, media, Microsoft, mojave experiment, negative publicity, PR, product launch, robert scoble, scobleizer, start your own business, vista, Windows, windows vista