How to create passionate fans for your products.

First some numbers, then an analysis:

Microsoft vice president of communications Frank X. Shaw recently posted some fascinating figures on his company blog:

• Microsoft has sold 150 million Windows 7 licenses in the first 8 months of its availability. That’s 600,000 per day, or one every seven seconds.
• In 2008, less than 10 percent of all netbooks in the U.S. ran Windows. In 2009? That number was more than 90 percent. Microsoft has conquered netbooks after a terribly slow start.
• Microsoft’s Xbox Live has 23 million subscribers. Netflix has 16 million.
• The excellent Bing search engine had 21.4 million users in the year since its launch.
• There 360 million Hotmail users around the world, nearly double that of Gmail.

The San Jose State University business professor Randall Stross wrote a terrific New York Times piece this week analyzing these numbers in a Wall Street context. Among many interesting statements, he said:

• Microsoft’s closing stock price last Friday was 55 percent below where it was in January 2000. (Think about that — nearly a decade of good work, and your stock price less than half of what it was!)
• By contrast, Apple’s stock price is up 829 percent over the same time period.
• Microsoft earned $4.52 billion over the last quarter. Apple: $3.25 billion. Google: $1.8 billion.
• And yet, judging from the stock price (the single most important criteria in this case), investors are showing Microsoft no “love.”

I will tell you why:

For all of its sales success — Windows 7, Office 2010, Microsoft Xbox, the motion sensing gaming product Kinect — Microsoft has little to no energy among consumers.

People don’t talk about Microsoft the way they talk about Apple, Google, or even HTC. Or Amazon. Or Acer. Or Canon. Or — and this is a real indictment — Palm.

People aren’t excited about Microsoft. Haven’t been in years.

Revenue and profits are one thing. But they don’t drive consumer passion and energy.

Rather, in technology, it’s consumer energy which leads almost single-handedly to everything that is important:

Consumer energy drives media energy.

Media energy drives investor energy.

Investor energy drives stock price, which drives everything in big tech.

Add it all up, and consumer energy drives everything.

Why does Microsoft have so little consumer energy?

1. Because it’s not talking to consumers enough. When Microsoft ran the I’m a PC ads that featured young, happy shoppers walking out of Best Buy with Windows computers, it was a coup. These ads marked the first time Microsoft outworked Apple in front of consumers in a decade or longer. They were gaining traction. But these ads were replaced quickly with quirkier, artsier, vaguer spots. They should have stuck with the retail pieces. Why? How long did Apple stick to the I’m a Mac ads? Years. Because they worked so incredibly well. Microsoft had a chance to do something similar — different shoppers, different retail environments, different PC brands — but  for some reason, the company ran away from success.
2. It’s not saying enough of the right things to consumers. The focus should be on price — a huge differentiator from Apple — and a dramatically improved user experience. Imagine the same young, attractive, hip-looking people saying this: Wow, Windows is so easy to use now…Check out this beautiful Powerpoint, and for half the price of doing it on a Mac! Think that would be effective?!

There’s no consumer energy unless you work hard to create it.

And you create it by talking to consumers relentlessly in compelling ways.

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