Microsoft, who trumps a 10% market share for Hard Disk Players that starts with “Z”, has changed ad agencies in response to the underwhelming reception for their Zune Music Device. They have chosen McCann-Erickson in San Francisco to develop a new strategy based on the personal, now that the Zune has been identified as largely a social disease amongst the young and fashionable:

….Zune is dropping its original strategy, which painted the iPod as an isolating device and Zune as more social because its tunes can be shared among users. Now the campaign is centered on the individual and tagged “You make it you.” The iPod “has become a superficial status symbol,” said Mike Harris, partner-strategy for T.A.G. Zune is more personal, he said.

Microsoft staff have put a brave face on the obvious failure to convince people that Microsoft can make a media device that does not completely suck, but merely less sucky that say using Windows Media Player:

Such sentiment has, of course, put mighty Microsoft in a more humble position when it comes to MP3 players. “We are very much aware of the strength of our competition, but once our company gets into something, it will not give up,” [Can you spell IRAQ - ed] said Mr. Stephenson, painting Microsoft as a challenger brand. “It’s good being in the No. 2 place — we can fight the good fight.”

Microsoft will continue to struggle with this product until it realize that it’s strength in the corporate sector is exactly the thing that is stopping them from being successful in the creative and left brain markets for consumer devices. It is exactly this brand myopia that Microsoft has believe that it has brand value beyond the corporate market.

The Zune will survive in the history books as a case study in the limitations of brand.

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