Microsoft's dumbest rebrand in its near 50 year history just got even dumber

[Windows Central]

Microsoft Office is one of the world's most recognizable brands, used by billions. The first rebrand to "Microsoft 365" was dumb by itself, but yesterday, the firm made it even dumber.

Microsoft's dumbest rebrand in its near 50 year history just got even dumber : Read more

 

[GraniteStateColin]

Mostly agree. MS seems to not know how bad they are at marketing. It's like this is part of their culture, so when new, young, probably capable, marketing people join the team, they get dumbed down and beaten down by the marketing culture at MS to thinking in the same broken way.

Microsoft constantly shows it doesn't place any value on brand loyalty. Even productlines they still offer are now worth far less because of their brand mismanagement: Skype, Surface, and now Office. MS neither respects its brands internally nor cares for the customers by rewarding their brand loyalty. I find this unconscionably bad marketing strategy, something I'm passionate about in my own work.

Having said that, I do see some point in moving from Office 365 to Microsoft 365: they added a lot of tools that have nothing directly to do with the original Office components: OneDrive, Teams, Copilot, security monitoring, Power Automate, and more. Plus, they've merged it with Windows for enterprise licensing (Azure AD). If a company buys a M365 license for its employee, it includes what we would have previously called the Windows, Office, and other licenses, now all bundled together.

I'm not defending their branding change -- for all the reasons Jez points out, this squanders and devalues the Office brand, but you can see how MS, with their broken perspective, can think, "It's not just Office any longer. Now we include everything that makes Microsoft Microsoft, so let's just name it all together and build the overall Microsoft brand. That will also help as we add new services and features in the future."

 

[Arun Topez]

Why did this article sound like it was written by some immature child?
Yeah Microsoft has boring branding, so does Apple and these other tech companies nowadays.

Also, for a Microsoft news site, you sure are unknowledgeable of their products you report on. Microsoft did not rebrand Copilot. They literally just announced today that "Microsoft Copilot" is now available to Microsoft 365 consumer plans (Family and Personal) starting today. It has a different logo text and marketing style compared to the enterprise version.

Microsoft 365 Copilot is different from Microsoft Copilot - per the official FAQ:
Microsoft Copilot is a portfolio of generative AI agents built into the Microsoft apps, products, and services you know and love. Microsoft Copilot supports enterprises, businesses, and individuals. Microsoft 365 Copilot is an AI assistant for work that’s built specifically in your productivity apps, supporting enterprises and businesses.

 

[Jez Corden]

Why did this article sound like it was written by some immature child?
Yeah Microsoft has boring branding, so does Apple and these other tech companies nowadays.

Also, for a Microsoft news site, you sure are unknowledgeable of their products you report on. Microsoft did not rebrand Copilot. They literally just announced today that "Microsoft Copilot" is now available to Microsoft 365 consumer plans (Family and Personal) starting today. It has a different logo text and marketing style compared to the enterprise version.

Microsoft 365 Copilot is different from Microsoft Copilot - per the official FAQ:
Microsoft Copilot is a portfolio of generative AI agents built into the Microsoft apps, products, and services you know and love. Microsoft Copilot supports enterprises, businesses, and individuals. Microsoft 365 Copilot is an AI assistant for work that’s built specifically in your productivity apps, supporting enterprises and businesses.

seems like you can't read. i never mentioned rebranding copilot. the fact you thought I did just reiterates my point that Microsoft branding is poor.

 

[xenred]

seems like you can't read. i never mentioned rebranding copilot. the fact you thought I did just reiterates my point that Microsoft branding is poor.

Yeah this proves this market just causes more confusion and so easy to mish mash everything and both can be right and wrong at the same time. We all have to rely on strict semantics now and can still be wrong. That's how bad the Microsoft marketing think tanks are.

It feels like Microsoft intentionally doing this for some odd reason. I know their product and services are growing and going more complex, but this is where they have tk be very careful and making sure their product branding is simple and easy to follow.

I thought simpler product naming and versioning is cooler. I guess Microsoft thinks differently.

Well sadly even Apple these days their branding gotten all over the place as well. But not that bad so far, since once you get to know their terms it does start to make sense and lately it has become bit more consistent again.

 

[Arun Topez]

seems like you can't read. i never mentioned rebranding copilot. the fact you thought I did just reiterates my point that Microsoft branding is poor.

Your article literally says "rebrand" all over, and even makes a big statement "dumbest rebrand in it's near 50 year history" and literally implies that Microsoft 365 is rebranded to "Microsoft 365 Copilot". Yeah the branding is nonsense, but nothing is being rebranded.
The "Microsoft 365 App" WEB APP that barely anyone uses simply got renamed to their existing "Microsoft 365 Copilot" product brand they announced earlier last year since that app is mostly that product now. Microsoft 365 is still the same, as is Copilot (except now they have 2 logos and marketing styles for businesses and consumers for whatever reason).

The Microsoft 365 app transition to the Microsoft 365 Copilot app - Microsoft Support

The Microsoft 365 (Office) app is now called the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. Get the details about the change and what it means to you.

support.microsoft.com

But yes I agree, the whole thing is messy and nonsense. When they already simplified it last year. Clearly people aren't using it, which is why they're doing all this unnecessarily complicating/changing of things. Seems like they don't know what they're doing either.