Normally in this web log I only write about the evolution of media, marketing, or brands. How people adapt, how the world adapts. I seldom write in the category dead end. Well, Microsoft managed to appear in this category. At its own website, at Office's Share Point Server pages, Microsoft nowadays has third parties advertise. René Janssen from WinkWaveseven managed to intercept a page with an ad for bra's (really, no typing error!). An incomprehensible action.
In a world in which every brand fights for attention, Microsoft apparently gets a little too much attention, and it rather sends people away from its website. This is just old-school publishers thinking: attract a big crowd, and earn money on advertisements. At Microsoft they must have thought: wow, we have a big audience, so we can behave like an old style publisher. Microsoft apparently doesn’t understand that it is the Office product that has to be sold, and that those particular web pages are meant to do that! As if in a sales pitch for a new car you get a 10 second commercial break for pension schemes every 5 minutes. It is really unbelievable. In a world in which it is all about attention, you need to use every attempt for a conversation to get into a dialogue, to try to involve people, make sure they come back, make sure you can be of help to them, so that they will be willing even to pay. This sending away behavior is not a side street, it is full power forwards, only at a dead end.