No News = Bad News
If you’re a company and one of your big rivals is just coming off a major event—say IBM PartnerWorld—and you need to steal some thunder, what do you do?
In this case, you gin up a confab in the Big Apple, headlined by your charismatic CEO, and invite a passel of reporters from as far away as D.C. and Boston (maybe farther) and talk about how your software is designed for use by—wait for it—PEOPLE!
Genius! The back-and-forth among press attendees echoed far beyond the Sheraton Hotel. Consumer and trade press buds pinged madly during and after the event.
The consensus (from both a Boston and a D.C.-based reporter) was, “I got up early, for this???”
An e-mail string concluded: “Man, I thought ‘OnDemand’ was meaningless, but this is even worse.”
AP managed to wring out this headline: “Microsoft To Market To Businesses.”
Erp. Businesses. As opposed to what, exactly?
A reporter with one of the big-biz rags wrote: “The ‘event’ itself was a total bait-and-switch. No news. Non-event. Never again, I swear to you today. Never. Will. I. Attend. A. Microsoft. Event. If I ever talk about attending one of these things, remind me of this pledge.” Of course, the next time Microsoft dangles Steve Ballmer, this guy—and everyone else—will show.
Again, this is not a Microsoft-only phenom. Anyone recall the ridiculous-to-the-point-of-sublime Google-Sun fiasco a few months back? CRNer Steve Burke summed it up as “Sunoogling.” Great name for a content-free event.
Reporters should take some blame for this trivialization. We all have space and online quotas to fill. Most of the week leading into this event was spent on the very earthshaking question as to whether Microsoft will ship Windows Vista in October or November.
In this case, very few reporters felt they could actually write that nothing happened. And none did. This is where bloggers—and columnists—can add value.
For those of us around long enough, this latest Microsoft event evoked a memory of 1997’s Microsoft Scalability Day. And that should worry Redmond.
Who else is trying to make something out of nothing? Let me know at (781) 839-1223 or via e-mail at [email protected].