Microsoft’s Dead Naming Strategy

We’ve forgotten Microsoft Bob, we’ve forgiven Microsoft .NET, but how on earth can we decipher Microsoft Windows Live?

As an investor in consumer-technology companies, I look for products and services that provide value and entertainment to people in a clear and simple way. Part of that clarity comes in the form of naming and branding. But Microsoft’s current “Live” branding strategy is the antithesis of good consumer branding, delivering a dizzying array of Microsoft brand and sub-brand combinations that are bound to perplex the average PC user.

A word about sub-brands: As companies grow, they often need to create sub-brands to encompass a wide range of product families. For example, you probably know that Sony VAIO means computer and Sony Walkman means portable music player; both examples of successful Sony sub-brands. When a company spawns too many sub-brands, however, things get confusing. How many consumers understand the difference between Sony WEGA and Sony BRAVIA televisions?

Microsoft has had long-standing success with two consumer sub-brands: Windows and Office. Over the years we’ve come to understand clearly that Windows is the software that makes our computers run, and Office is the collection of desktop applications that enables us to do useful things with our computers. Enter the disruptive force of the Internet. Now, any computer running any operating system with any standards-based Web browser can do useful things using Web-based applications. Microsoft has made huge efforts to stay relevant with Web-based apps and services, but it has created a branding mess along the way.

In August 1995, Microsoft launched MSN to compete primarily with America Online and also other portals. Over the last 11-plus years, Microsoft has added an array of content channels and consumer services to MSN, including the acquisition of Hotmail for free Web-based email. This positioned MSN as the brand for online, in-browser (and instant messaging) consumer experiences and left Windows and Office as the brands for desktop consumer experiences. That has all changed with Microsoft’s new Windows Live products.

The rollout of the “Live” sub-brand has involved rebranding all of the previously MSN-branded Web services, leaving MSN.com focused on a wide range of content channels. MSN Hotmail, MSN Messenger and MSN Spaces have become Windows Live Hotmail, Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Spaces, respectively. MSN becomes static content and Windows Live becomes active services.

Makes sense at first glance, right?

But wait, there’s more. Microsoft has rolled out a family of subscription services for small businesses to build, host and advertise their company online called Microsoft Office Live. It has also released a free desktop email application, replacing Outlook Express, called Windows Live Mail (see Katherine Boehret’s detailed review in The Mossberg Solution here).

This has to be disorienting to consumers. Microsoft is crossing a dangerous line, diluting the clarity of its Windows and Office sub-brands and spreading the “Live” brand so thin it won’t be able to establish a clear position in consumers’ minds.

So, as best as I can tell from the company’s muddled and ever-changing naming strategy, here is a map of major Microsoft consumer brands and product names in computing (leaving out Xbox, Zune, MSNBC, etc.) where I think it stands today:

Let’s quickly contrast that to Google’s branding strategy for consumer Web services:

For the most part, Google has stuck to a time-tested formula: Brand + Descriptive Word = Product Name. This reinforces the Google brand and helps consumers understand that a product like Google Desktop is actually for use on your PC desktop. The two notable exceptions are Gmail, which stands apart as a top-level brand of its own, and the recently released iGoogle, which breaks every branding rule in the book (imagine Apple launching a new product called iApple).

How could Microsoft learn from Google’s branding simplicity? Here are my five suggestions to move “Live” in that direction:

1. Stop using Windows to brand Web services that run on any computer in any browser. Simply brand those “Microsoft Live.”
2. Don’t add “Live” to the names of products beginning with “Vista” or “Office”–ever. Not even one. I’m serious. Let Vista and Office continue to mean PC Desktop and help differentiate Live to mean Web.
3. Rename “Microsoft Office Live Basics” to “Microsoft Live Business Site.” See No. 2 above.
4. Rename “Windows Live OneCare” to “Windows OneCare.” Remember, it only works on a Windows PC.
5. Rename “Windows Live Mail” to “Windows Mail 2.0″ and bundle it with future releases of Vista. I know it seems short and simple, but that’s the whole idea.