Very interesting points. Here is what I am wondering, just because he is "publishe" doesn't mean he has anything of substance to say. Peronality is a subjective issue that can be hard to measure. That being said, MS unlike other firms has plenty of personality and character.
Believe me when I say that, in the Small Business World, MS is the hero. Without their exponential development, small business would not enjoy such technologically advanced position.
http://consultancyissues.blogspot.com/

So you don't like his Scoble comment... whatever. But your whole post shows that you don't understand the idea of personality at all.

Sorry, but Google and Apple don't just have a good illustrator and rights to a black and white photo. They are driven to express a personality and do so.

Microsoft tries to assimilate a personality by copying other companies' successful advertising.

And I don't care if some people in Microsoft who do like the dinosaur ads or if they were tested, I have tested people and they are universally reviled as demeaning. For 2 months I asked random people on BART platforms, what they thought of them. The general and number #1: "They're calling me a dinosaur? It's their software that sucks! They aren't going to get me to upgrade to a product with cheezy task panes (that still have the bugs) by insulting me?"

If they were tested, these lecturers are right: fire your ad agency.

Additionally, I see his point: Scoble has been doing little to challenge the company of late. Many of us view him as a shill. Not a free-speaking voice. Scoble loses credibility everyday he claims he's willing to criticize Microsoft but ignores obvious and significant issues like the attempt to thwart rival software from media players and the threat of pulling out of South Korea. The outside criticizes you much better than you guys do for yourself. ...Unfortunately, you still don't seem to listen or get it.

It sounds like the authors took a left turn at communication and went into product design during their talk. Some of our stuff has great personality. Using OneNote rocks. On the other hand, I sure hope the SQL server folks are more concerned about availability and reliability than personality.

Perhaps a more useful exercise is to get at why consumer's like 'personality'. Donald Norman's 2004 book "Emotional Design: Why we love (or hate) everyday things." does a good job of explaining the issue so an engineer can understand. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0465051359/102-0734431-4704937?v=glance

It's not as a good as "The Design of Everyday things", and the last half of the book wanders off. However, the first part can give a framework to understand why people enjoy design that has personality, and what it takes to create those designs. It also may shed some light on where Chelsea Hardaway and Brian Fugere were coming from, with their Google, and Apple examples.

As for their Scoble comments ... did they confuse him with mini-microsoft? Perhaps I missed it, but I just don't see the problem they do.

G: I undertand the value of personality. As he started talking about it I got excited. But I did not think his examples were convincing, and then the part about Scoble turned me off.

But personality certainly is important. How much of a role did Solitaire play in the success of Windows...more than you might think.

SS: No, he was talking about Scoble...but I don't know where he got the idea that Scoble spends his time criticizing the company.

- adam

'people' ;-)

One things for certain, its sparked off a barrage of debates on some of the internal DL's - which is always a great thing.

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It's never easy to hear criticism. "They don't get what we do!" Well, that's his complaint: if the personality of the company was adequately communicated, people *would* get what you do, and even get excited about it.

Aside from the MS bloggers, who really communicates the passion that, certainly, a large bunch of the internal team feel for their work?

I think the Bullfighters are right; the ad agency isn't doing it. This is why, in the general public's mind, they have a generally negative perception of Microsoft as a monopolist, the makers of things that BSOD on them, or require hourly security/antivirus/etc. updates. And in this dinosaur ad example, greedy, too.

It's simply a bad ad, chiding you for using an older app (which may work fine, esp. if you have an older computer, can't afford to upgrade, etc.) rather than focusing on the positives of upgrading.

Here's another example of personality. I don't think people associate the cool stuff - like Xbox, Microsoft PC peripherals (surprisingly well designed), or the up-and-coming IPTV with Microsoft, Ballmer or Gates. When was the last time Gates stopped a presentation to talk about a new optical trackball?

But Steve Jobs can devote a third of his keynote to the new Mighty Mouse, discuss the thinking that went into it, show it, give them away, and otherwise display passion about it that gets people rabidly talking about an otherwise only slightly innovative device! That's a seamless part of the Apple personality; they care about the little details. Microsoft prefers the Big Picture, the Road Ahead, and leaves the little details to others. But it's those details that matter!

Focus groups really tell you almost nothing of value; I'll reveal that to you right now. Anyone who asks for your money for focus group testing is planning a Caribbean vacation. All you need to do is ask the right questions of the right types of customers or users. In the case of software, it's simply iterate and test (using proper testing methodology, timed tasks, eye tracking, etc.) and improve.

Similarly, bland PR-speak is carefully crafted to say nothing. It is a comfortable noise that corporations make to get people to trust them, a kind of reflex mimicking of speech that sounds "business like" or contains buzzwords.

Trust me - the executives don't write it, they pay the marketing department or a PR firm to do it; they might ask for changes, and then sign off on it - but they have little to do with its actual creation. Having written a few thousand in my time, I feel I can say that with authority ;)