Inside "marketing at Microsoft"

Article here. I've been here for six years and have seen some big changes in how we "do marketing". This is the first article I've seen that really sums up those changes. Flash back to 1999 and everything was about "customer satisfaction". Six years later, it's not a so-called buzzword anymore now that our focus as a company has shifted from being purely about the technology (build the features because we can) to being about customers (build the features because customers want them).

As someone who recruits for the marketing space, seeing marketing being clearly defined as a discipline makes my job easier. I think of the marketing career path as my product. It's much easier to sell when I can describe it, point to it, etc. It makes any employment branding work that I do more real because the customer value proposition is defined...it gives us an employment brand promise to live up to. Wow..I am totally geeking out. There's more to blog about here...another time.

Anyhoo, good reading for anyone thinking about a marketing career at Microsoft or who is just curious about who these marketing folks are and what exactly they are doing.