Frank Shaw on corporate ethics
From Marketing Excellence - Resetting the Microsoft Image Agenda - Frank Shaw - 2010/04 · · WalkingCat
“They're lying. I mean they are just lying. Uh or at best there is a kernel of truth there that you know somebody at company X downloaded Google apps maybe by mistake and so now we're going to count them as a deployment. We have to be better at finding those nuggets of facts for us that we can illuminate in a way that makes a broader point that doesn't hurt our credibility in quite the same way. So we have to challenge them harder in some ways and we have to be better from an execution standpoint than they do.”
On , Frank Shaw, Chief Communications Officer at Microsoft, spoke about corporate ethics during Marketing Excellence - Resetting the Microsoft Image Agenda - Frank Shaw - 2010/04 on WalkingCat.
About Frank Shaw
In a 2010 internal talk, Shaw discussed Microsoft's brand image, describing Windows 7 as having "saved the company" by demonstrating its ability to deliver a quality operating system on time. He characterized Google as having an "Achilles heel" of "arrogance" and accused the company of lying about its user numbers. Shaw stated that Microsoft was "making a bet on citizenship" as a long-term branding strategy, even though it did not "dramatically move the brand" in the short term. He identified the U.S. Marine Corps as a brand he admired for its authenticity and the Dallas Cowboys as one he disliked for representing "arrogance." In a 2026 podcast, Shaw discussed the role of AI in public relations, arguing that the profession "really hasn't changed" but now has "better tools." He said he does not view AI as a cost-cutting measure but as a way to address work that currently cannot be done due to resource constraints. Shaw stated that communications professionals must become accustomed to working with "agents" that have "unique talents," managing them similarly to human team members. He noted that AI allows practitioners to "get information more rapidly" and "process information more rapidly," but emphasized that they must still make time to "sit and think about it."