Making Microsoft hip?

With more and more businesses transitioning to Mac-based office environments, Microsoft’s numbers continue to dwindle. So I seriously can’t imagine being Alex Bogusky, the merchant of cool who faces the challenge of making Microsoft hip.

Seriously, picture waking up knowing that your objective for the day was to convince people that the portly man with the wire rims and 9:00-to-5:00 dress code (from the ever-recognizable Apple ads) actually uses a Mac, while his self-aware counterpart basks in the glow of the social elitism that is Microsoft Windows. 

I would go back to bed.

Disparity in the products aside (I know some people who are better suited to use a non-Mac, and I can respect that), it’s simply the aura and culture surrounding the two camps of users that seems, at this moment, insurmountable. The Fast Company article mentions an unwillingness on the part of Microsoft to adapt to desires of the market, in terms of advertising and their product itself:

“Not everyone is convinced that Microsoft’s problem is simply about ad messaging. ‘Microsoft seems like a company whose executive staff is isolated and unable to move and take corrective action,’ says tech analyst Enderle, explaining the obstacles for Crispin. ‘I worry more on the client side than the agency side.’ And while other PC makers like HP have been able to gin up new zeitgeisty appeal — using, for instance, Gwen Stefani and Jay-Z — Gartner’s Frank isn’t so quick to assume that hiring Crispin means Microsoft is ready to really let its hair down. ‘I suspect what Microsoft would most like to instill in people’s minds is they are innovators and leaders, and that’s what they think of as being cool,’ he says.”

(Does anyone else think HP’s choice of Stefani and Jay-Z is bizarre if the objective is to sell computers? I could see their appeal aiding the sales of other gadgets, but PCs? Questionable.)

Bogusky’s best bet at this point might be to borrow “The King” from his series of Burger King ads and just run a couple of ironic dual-client spots with The King typing up a spreadsheet in Excel. 

In a few months, Bogusky might be wishing he was flipping Double Whoppers for a living.

The Pickens Plan

I’ve been a bit spooked by T Boone Pickens, and his media blitz to promote the Pickens Plan. What’s his agenda, you know? Well this National Journal interview with Pickens helped to provide a little bit of the rationale and motivation behind Pickens’ campaigning.

Clearly Pickens’ concerns are more economically founded than my convictions regarding creation care, but true solutions need to be environmentally sustainable as well as economically viable, so creating a hybrid (pun?) of his plan with Al Gore’s agenda could get us on the right track. 

The real distinctive of what Pickens is calling for, as I’m just now reading up on it, is for change that occurs outside of slow D.C. bureaucracy, rather through “business and industry,” as Pickens puts it. There’s money to be had in green energy, and a lot of blue-collar jobs can be created to aid those workers suffering from the demise of automotive and steel industries.

Maybe we’ll start to see change. Maybe America will stop sleeping with OPEC. Wait and see.