Vista's big noise makes little impact

Vista’s big noise makes little impact

Ritson M. Marketing; 14 February, 2007, Viewpoint

Purpose – To assess why the launch of Microsoft Vista made little impact. Design/methodology/approach – Outlines Microsoft’s launch strategy. Findings – Everything associated with the launch of Microsoft Vista was big yet the impact has been small and most of the trade press has remained unimpressed. However, believes that the big question is not whether the Vista launch was a major disappointment but why it had such a small impact,given the funds, scale and time ploughed into it. Suggests that one explanation could be that Vista is not as important as we have been led to believe and that a bigger launch is on the horizon or that the budget was too big, making marketers lazy, big and ineffective, paying little attention to positioning or marketing return on investment. Wonders whether another explanation could be that we are living in an inherently interactive, multi-vocal and polysemous world and the days of the big global launch may be over now that we have entered the era of blogging and co-creativity. Originality/value – Remarks that the great irony of Vista is that the interactivity and connectivity it was designed to offer its users might also explain its apparently very big, but actually very small, launch.

Keywords: Marketing strategy, Microsoft, Product launch