Microsoft’s uncool quest for cool

Interesting post by Ken Segall today, see http://kensegall.com/2013/02/microsofts-uncool-quest-for-cool/

In the technology biz, “cool” is a very good thing to be. Ask Apple. Its past revolutions were fueled by the ever-present aura of cool. But where exactly does cool come from? One thing is for certain: it doesn’t come from standing on a mountaintop and screaming “we’re cool!”

I remember doing this to a development team a few years ago. Just asking them to “make it cool”. Obviously the question came up “what you mean – cool?”. It’s actually a lot harder to answer than what you think first. I had to provide some very specific guidance. Look for examples of what I meant. It was a lot of hard work, and it was difficult to an unexpected extent to get to a consensus about ‘coolness’.

One thing that never crossed my mind though was ask marketing to create an ad like the stuff Microsoft does for Surface. It’s disgusting. Non-informative. And it’s not even cool. Sorry Microsoft, you’re not getting it. Ever.