How Microsoft could save $1 billion in Phone 7 marketing

Do a ‘Gizmodo’ minus the door-kicking search

Tech journalists across Silicon Valley are scanning bar stools looking for a mislaid Microsoft Phone 7 prototype. If Microsoft were smart, it would save much of the reported $400 million to $1 billion it’s planning to spend to market and advertise Phone 7 with one strategically placed prototype plant.

Look what it did for Apple! When an Apple designer inadvertently (so the story goes) left a prototype iPhone 4 at a bar in Redwood City, Calif., back in April, Apple got tons of free publicity that generated buzz for the June 24 launch of iPhone 4 in the U.S. Only some of it was negative, such as when the authorities broke down the door at the home of the editor of Gizomodo.com, which broke the story, looking for evidence at the behest of Apple.

Or Microsoft could get Phone 7 a cameo on a hit TV show. The Emmy-nominated comedy series “Modern Family” built an entire episode around one character’s obsession with getting an Apple iPad for his birthday; the episode aired just a few days before the iPad launch April 3. A cynic pointed out to me at the time that “Modern Family” is on ABC-TV, which is owned by Disney, one of whose directors is Steve Jobs. This is what they call “synergy.”

Alas, Microsoft is not Apple when it comes to building an aura around its products. The reason the iPhone 4 on a bar stool story got so much play is that it ran counter to the typical Apple narrative about a company obsessed with secrecy and of not allowing any information to leak that could steal the thunder from Jobs’ own “Just one more thing” presentation of the new product.

John Dvorak at MarketWatch said Microsoft spent $1 billion on advertising in 2009 versus Apple’s $377 million, citing Advertising Age, begging the question about “which company got more bang for the buck.“ So, yes, Microsoft is going to have to, based on Advertising Age’s numbers, nearly double its ad budget this year just to push Phone 7. Microsoft has some challenges ahead to spend that money wisely.

First off, Microsoft has got more than just Apple to worry about; it's got Google Android and RIM BlackBerry also competing in the smartphone marketplace. Android is on fire with it’s market momentum and is running on the same smarpthone brands on which Phone 7 will run, namely HTC, LG, Samsung.

I’m currently using a Samsung Android smartphone on loan from Sprint for another blog site for which I write. It is impressive. Its fast 1GHz Hummingbird processor, 4-inch Super AMOLED screen and flawless user interface are amazing. In seconds, I turned the phone into a wi-fi hot spot for my laptop. It’ll be even more amazing once Sprint’s 4G network truly becomes ubiquitous.

Phone 7 has lots of great potential and has been largely well received. It’s going to offer a People Hub that brings together all the different ways to contact a person’s friends be it e-mail, phone, Facebook or anything else. It’s offering hubs for games, music and video.

More importantly for enterprise customers, it’s going to offer a hub for work stuff. It supports Microsoft Office, including SharePoint so that workers can collaborate on a project with their colleagues from their Phone 7 device.

But to truly be a hit, Phone 7 can’t just match the features and capabilities of iPhones, Android devices or BlackBerrys. It’s got to surpass them. Microsoft’s challenge is to offer a user experience that emphasizes the “Wow Factor.” It’s got to get people to forget all the mistakes Microsoft has made in the past in mobile that caused it to fall so far behind Apple, Android and BlackBerry.

Come to think of it, Microsoft may not need a product placement on “Modern Family.” Instead, Phone 7 should appear in a remake of “Men in Black,” in which Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith use their “Neuralyzers” (a Phone 7 app, perhaps?) to erase our memories of the Kin.

• Microsoft
• Android
• Apple
• BlackBerry
• Microsoft
• Phone 7
• Windows