Frank Shaw on product strategy
From Marketing Excellence - Resetting the Microsoft Image Agenda - Frank Shaw - 2010/04 · · WalkingCat
“Windows 7 saved the company. If you think about it, people questioned our ability to bring an operating system to the market on time and in a high quality way. They didn't believe we could do it. I mean, you know, everybody Vista was late. It didn't deliver what people wanted. And that served as a proxy for the company overall. When we talk about the brand, the brand that's most closely linked to the Microsoft brand is the Windows brand. And so when you see the Windows brand under the kind of attack that we were under with Windows Vista, you know, really drags the entire brand down.”
On , Frank Shaw, Chief Communications Officer at Microsoft, spoke about product strategy 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."