Marketing errors should be blamed on Bond
Tom Warren’s article first begins by looking back at the announcement itself, which took place on a Friday evening to everyone’s surprise. This is obviously not what Microsoft had planned. According to the journalist from The Verge, Microsoft planned to reveal this information today, Monday February 23. However, IGN released the information first, and a wave of panic gripped the tech giant. Which would partly explain why Sarah Bond would not have been entitled to her email to the teams, her staff not being prepared to send everything this Friday.
And regarding Sarah Bond, Tom Warren has a lot to say about her. According to its sources, the “This is an Xbox” campaign – which has caused so much debate – would come from Bondsince the marketing team would respond directly to his orders since the departures of Kareem Choudrhry (who managed backward compatibility and xCloud) and Jerret West (who managed marketing). An advertisement which extended the “Xbox Everywhere” desired by the brand, but which would have been very poorly received internally according to the article.
Another fact that would incriminate Bond here is the launch of the Xbox store on mobile, which has been continually postponed. Still according to Tom Warren, Sarah Bond was seen as someone talented to work with external partners and developers, but quite difficult to contradict. Several people internally would be relieved to see her leave.
The article also looks at employee reaction to Asha Sharma’s appointment, noting that there were concerns about her CV, including her time at Microsoft Core AI. But Tom Warren prefers here to highlight the speech of the person concerned, who used, again, all the right words to reassure the public, and whose reliability still remains to be determined.
The perfect scapegoat?
All this being said, we can still wonder to what extent these first echoes are elements of language sent urgently to quickly counterbalance the shock of the announcementwhich arrived too soon.
The article seems particularly critical of Sarah Bond, almost clearing the fact that all his actions were validated by Phil Spencer, his superiorand by extension by Satya Nadella. Naturally, Sarah Bond has a responsibility for the group’s recent failures (like Matt Booty and the other managers of the brand), but the article seems to forget to specify that certain decisions undoubtedly could not have been taken without the approval of Phil Spencer.
To say that Microsoft sent the right messages to build a real scapegoat figure with Sarah Bond is perhaps going too far given the little information at our disposal, but we must be careful with these first rumors while awaiting a slightly more in-depth investigation.