Despite its strong product lineup and services, marketing is still one of the areas where Microsoft lags behind its rivals. In the past, each of Microsoft’s division was responsible for their own marketing. Windows team will spend their marketing budget on creating commercials that focuses on Windows OS alone whereas Office team will target Office specific features. As part of “One Microsoft” strategy, Microsoft recently unified the marketing team across the company. Today, Adweek reported that Microsoft is planning to overhaul its approach to marketing by shifting from product-specific ads to broader consumer and business-oriented campaigns. Adweek obtained this information from Microsoft’s RFP shared to ad agencies. Microsoft is searching for an agency team that “optimizes talent, creates process and execution efficiencies, and gives Microsoft the best leverage in the marketplace,” the RFP stresses. Particularly revealing, the document states that Microsoft “believes a holding company model consolidating most of its work (about 80 percent) with one or two holding companies” is the formula for success. Speaking to Adweek, Microsoft’s new...

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