Microsoft's ad umbrella; Tech giant connects with McCann to unify its many marketing pushes.

Advertising Age, June, 2001 by Elkin, Tobi

Not so long ago, marketing at Microsoft Corp. was a kind of blood sport in which highly autonomous business units and product groups set their own priorities and budgets, each competing for influence over strategy and decision-making.

Ad and marketing dollars were deployed to support initiatives of each feudal fiefdom-efforts that often bore little or no relation to one another. Such marketing programs became islands without connection, increasingly inefficient, and detached from any sense of brand Microsoft.

That scenario is no more.

Over the past year, the world's biggest software company has tried to change the decentralized nature of its marketing to achieve more consistency. While kinks remain, a global campaign for the MSN Internet...

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