Microsoft Finally Does Some Intelligent Marketing For The Zune
Sep 7th, 2010 | By James Lewin | Category: iPods & Portable Media Players 
The Zune has been the whipping boy of new media since the portable media player’s introduction, because Microsoft made the mistake of taking a iPod wannabee and throwing a bunch of marketing money at it.
The Zune has improved a lot, since then, but it still hasn’t made an impression with buyers. This is largely because Microsoft botched the brand introduction of the Zune, establishing the brand as the biggest tech failure of the last decade.
Now Microsoft has finally done something intelligent with their Zune marketing: they’re putting them on international United Airlines flights:
United Airlines has just given the media player a new lease on life thanks to a partnership that will place Zune HDs into the hands of patrons. Reportedly, United will host around 500 Zune players on extra-long flights between the U.S. and Australia and Hong Kong.
The deal will provide those Zune players with pre-loaded content that can’t be found anywhere else (think pre-release movies), but details beyond that have yet to be made public.
This isn’t a huge deal for Microsoft – but it’s a smart one.
Take a bored, captive audience and give them Zunes loaded with content and you’re going to get a lot of people giving the Zune an open mind.
The next thing Microsoft should do is send free Zunes to the top 100 podcasters in the Zune podcast directory, along with a cheat sheet on getting started with podcasts on the Zune. If it gets 10 of them talking about the Zune, expand the program to the top 500 podcasters.
Then do the same thing with the top 100 new media blogs. Apple press ignores blogs, so it’s one place where it should be easy to one-up Apple.
Send another to the top 100 video bloggers on YouTube!
What do you think of the United Airlines Zune deal? And what do you think Microsoft needs to do to get people to give the current Zunes a chance?
Zune… Bwahaha… Sorry but that’s a [expletive deleted] waste of space/time and money.
The problem with Zune’s marketing is Microsoft.
They’ve never, NEVER!, had to sell jack-squat to someone who wasn’t over a barrel or had to actually use their products.
That’s what the last antitrust trial was all about. But it was a replay of the previous antitrust trials…
Everything that Microsoft comes up with is designed by second rate accountants, and its got the look and feel to prove it.
The Zune i no different, but its not being sold to their old market, and consumers don’t buy crap if they don’t have to.
Consumers are cheap [expletive deleted] but they’re not stupid.
Microsoft’s margin requirements are too large to be satisfied with the razor thin margins that they can get from consumer electronic products.
It would also require expertise that Microsoft is not interested in getting. They’d probably call security on the kinds of people they’d have to deal with. In fact, they couldn’t buy the expertise. The people that they would get are second ate A&R men, not talent.
I’m betting that the accountants at Microsoft kill off the Zune within a year.