Looks like the competition is heating up. Remember when, a few years ago, Slack pulled a daring marketing campaign to taunt Microsoft as the latter entered the former’s territory? No? Well, they took out a full-page ad in The New York Times to call out the Bill Gates Behemoth. Here’s a picture from The Verge.
One of the lines reads, “This is harder than it looks.” Apparently for Microsoft, it ain’t that hard. Enter: Microsoft Teams.
Years later — ahem, today — Slack filed a competition complaint against Microsoft in the EU for bundling Teams with their Office products.
As The Verge points out, “Slack has persistently claimed that Microsoft Teams is not a true competitor, largely because it’s more focused on video calls and meetings. That’s clearly not true . . .”
This complaint goes to show that your marketing needs to be closely tied to the rest of your business. Otherwise, you look tacky. While on the one hand Slack promoted a bold campaign position, they gotta back it up with actually welcoming Microsoft as real competition. Slack did say, after all, that “It’s all about love.”
Where’s the love now, Slack?
Competition is competition, even if your competition is the 800-pound gorilla. Milton Friedman would be proud. . .
Let the collaboration games begin.
