Dylan Hunter

A very cute timeline / explanation of the buzz campaign for the way overhyped MS Origami Project. And while there’s definitely no question that Dustin Hubbard deserves some strong credit for pulling it off, (or, at least gets the credit for serendipity! ) it also shows a bit of the danger of overhyping a product that’s just not that extraordinary.

Had the UMPC been as impressive as folks were hoping from the buzz, MS would have done beautifully in kicking up its reputation a good, strong bit on the innovation front, even if they only sold 2 UMPC units, helping them to cover up some of the Vista black eyes, and, perhaps, if they could get a couple of whiz-bang doo-dads back in the product schedule before Vista, *1* might actually help them a bit on adoption there, as well, (and for that, if it pulls forward adoption curves even .001%, it would have more than paid for itself, Dustin and the entire Origami Team at least a hundred times over! ).

Unfortunately, since after all this hype, what eventually came out was effectively one very large Wet Noodle(tm), unfortunately, it serves the opposite purpose, serving to damage MS as wasting our time with another not fully baked product, (probably sticking to its classic “get it right by v. 3.0″ strategy) that doesn’t do what the Innovators want it to, and is much too expensive to generate any significant Early Adopter purchase.

Buzz is always a double-edged sword, and here, since the level wasn’t well-matched to the thing being hyped, it ended up scoring a net negative. But still, a good learning experience and, as importantly, a fine display of skill that will hopefully only become more impressive with further seasoning, and were it my call, (which it isn’t! ) Dustin and the rest of the Origami Buzz Team have proved themselves well enough to give them a shot at the Big Leagues - I’d definitely toss them on either the Vista or revamped MSN Search launch teams to see what they could do on those, and just ask them to try to do a tighter “buzz match,” (to external potential opinion, rather than oversipping the internal koolaid) on that one.

So, nicely done Dustin & Gang, on the level of buzz generated, and, as importantly, for having the courage to admit the strong role of serendipity in, rather than playing it as planned perfectly from the beginning, (and here, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they would have done anyway, even if the phrase “overhyped” weren’t flying about from the moment the UMPC launched! ). Here’s hoping you keep moving on from here. And for the rest of us, a good thought exercise to keep in mind when planning our buzz campaigns, (knowing that any claim to actually “control buzz” is like handing someone a card with “cat herder” on it - immediately stamps a big, blaring “SMOKING CRACK” across the forehead of the speaker / giver! ).
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*1* Even if only on the version that would ship with UMPC’s, where they could control the hardware configs better for a first shot, and then for more GA on the desktop / laptop front later. In fact, if played right, could let MS use the UMPC for a nice semi-GA tech test bed for a little bit, to let them say that they’ve actually released some of the features that they’ve kept ripping out of Vista, even if they’re only available to the 14 people who would actually shell out the thousand bucks to be the first on their block to own their own Star Trek: Next Generation notepad doo-hickey!