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Barbarians Led By Bill Gates
By Jennifer Edstrom and Martin Eller
pages 32-43
Not long after Edstrom signed on, she was joined by Rowland Hanson, the former vice president of marketing for Neutrogena Corporation, a maker of soap and cosmetics. Good looking, well-dressed, and a computer virgin, Hanson, a die-hard surfer and beach lover, came from a world of fragrant packaged goods where appearances-image and perception-were everything. He represented all that Microsoft, in the early 1980s, was not. Until 1983, the computer industry was still so arrogant that it had no idea how truly bush league it was when it came to packaging and pitching products for consumers. Gates, in the early 1980s, was the epitome of this clueless arrogance, but he and Microsoft were about to receive a face-lift. Hanson and Edstrom would spin a whole new image for Gates himself. They would tap the best and worst of Chairman Bill, changing his clothes, his voice, and his allegiances, driving him to become not just the boss, but essentially the company mascot-a sort of high-technology Colonel Sanders. Hanson, who always longed to own his own business, had been getting ready to leave Neutrogena and launch a new line of pet care products. Just before getting the seed money he needed for his new venture, he took a call from a New York-based search firm responsible for recruiting executives for Microsoft. “Here’s the type of guy I want,” Gates told the headhunters. “I don’t care if he knows anything about computers. I need a guy who really understands branding.” If Hanson could create market differentiation for something as straightforward as hand lotion, Gates reasoned, then why not do the same with software? Hanson didn’t fancy himself much in the nerdy world of computers, nor was he eager to trade in southern California sunshine for rain. Hanson agreed to fly up on a Sunday morning to meet with Gates. Hanson got on the plane to Seattle with every intention of saying no. Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, Gates’s dorm-mate at college and new chief confidant, who had earlier spent a brief stint at consumer-goods giant Procter and Gamble, picked up Hanson at the airport, and the two hit it off immediately, talking football on the drive to Bellevue. A husky six-feet-one, two hundred twenty-five pounds, Ballmer had once been student manager of the Harvard football team. When they got to Gates’s office, the young chairman immediately launched into sales mode, rocking back and fourth with excitement as he explained his vision of computing. It was all Greek to Hanson, but then a light went off in his head. In Microsoft he saw”marketing” Pygmalion…with Gates as Eliza Doolittle. “I’m starting to get what you’re talking about here,” Hanson said. He was fascinated with the birth of new industries, a soldier of fortune always looking for a new marketing challenge. “But I have no idea why you’re interested in me?” Gates looked puzzled.” I thought you understood, he said. Hanson shook his head. ” What’s the difference between a dollar-per-ounce moisturizer and a hundred dollar-an-ounce moisturizer?” “Technically …there is no difference. Vaseline works as well as Clinique’s daily moisturizer. It may even be more effective.” “So what’s the difference?” Gates asked. “Well, it’s in the brand. The image you create around the brand.” “That’s why I need you in this company,” Gates said. “Because nobody in this company or in this industry really understands that. And if we can have the perception, I can create the reality. With the combination of the reality and the perception, nobody will ever beat us.” Hanson was sold. But it would take three months of negotiating to bring him to Microsoft. One of the stipulations, Hanson said, was that he would only stay at Microsoft a couple of years. After that, he would start his own business. Sure, Gates agreed, confident that Hanson Pet Care Products would never see the light of day. Hanson joined Microsoft in early 1983. As vice president of corporate communications, Hanson was responsible for advertising, public relations, and anything that had to do with retail promotions and the public. Hanson’s goal was to position the company as the industry leader in software. But to get there, they would need to establish fundamentals. Microsoft was an environment in transition-sort of like Beirut is in a transition- a company with no checks and balances dominated entirely by developers. They did what they wanted when they wanted. Procedures didn’t exist. Hanson liked the challenge. Hanson’s goal was to position Microsoft as the “safe buy, the quality buy,” i.e., the next IBM. Hanson not only began changing what Microsoft said, he began a makeover in how the company appeared to corporate America. If Microsoft wanted to be the “safe buy,’ people had to see Microsoft the way they saw IBM-stable, hardworking, straight up and down. IBM didn’t always make the best hardware-its PC Junior machine had been a disaster and eventually people would realize that. But for a long time, people bought IBM because of the perception of safety. Nobody purchasing computers in corporate America was going to stick his neck out by buying some jerk-off brand. You had to buy a brand you could defend to your nontechnical senior management, as well as to shareholders. Gates knew that victory meant people simply asking for the Microsoft brand. But if Hanson was going to position Microsoft in a certain way, he first had to understand what people thought about the company. He proposed spending $50,000 on the first awareness and attitude study in the computer industry. He knew of a company called Griggs and Anderson, a Portland, Oregon-based research house that had been doing focus groups. The research would evaluate not only the general awareness perceptions of Microsoft, but also what features Microsoft should be including in its products. Gates’ reaction to Hanson’s plan was: “This is insane.” Gates and Hanson battled back and fourth. Then at one of their Monday-morning strategy meetings with Microsoft’s other top executives the bickering came to a head. “We’re not going to do it,” Gates shouted. Hanson pressed on. ” I need to proceed with this research,” he said. “We’re not going to get it done in time, and I have ad schedules to make. A lot of this is going to be used.” Right then in front of everybody, Gates reversed his position. “You’re right,” Gates said. “Let’s do it.” “That’s why Gates was so successful,” Hanson would later reflect. ” His ability to turn on a dime, and to listen to the smart people he had surrounded himself with.” The next item on Hanson’s agenda was to figure out the message Microsoft wanted to deliver. Griggs and Anderson performed their focus groups, comparing Microsoft with other companies such as VisiCorp and IBM. The survey results provided pretty compelling, if not damning evidence. People said they wouldn’t purchase Microsoft’s software because they couldn’t understand the packaging-pure techno-babble. People were also turned off by Microsoft’s own forest green logo, dubbed the “Blibbet,” that had the name Microsoft, with the letter O crisscrossed with horizontal lines, which to this day has defied interpretation. The results told Hanson how people viewed each company and exactly what it would take for people to perceive Microsoft as the industry leader. He took that input and developed the necessary message. It was a very disciplined, systematic approach-something totally alien to the boys’ club of techies who relished their Animal House ways. Hanson and his team knew the company had to have a sole spokesman to make sure the message to the public remained controlled and focused. Before Hanson arrived on the scene, the absence of formal Microsoft marketing procedures left developers calling the shots. They chose the awful names and wrote the impenetrable lingo on the back of the boxes. They talked freely to the press, improvising randomly, trying to evangelize the company, but instead spreading inconsistency and wild incoherence. In Hanson and Edstrom’s view of the world, Gates should be Microsoft’s spokesman. Microsoft’s cofounder, Paul Allen, had resigned in 1983 after battling Hodgkin’s disease, and Gates fit the consummate developer image. Hanson sent around a gag order-no talking to the media. This was, to say the least, not a popular decision with Microsoft’s developers. Developers were also skeptical about Hanson’s decision to change the manuals and the packaging based on consumer feedback. Some developers thought if the consumer was too stupid to understand the manual, they probably shouldn’t be using the product in the first place. Hanson ignored this arrogance. For him and for Microsoft, the Griggs and Anderson research was proving invaluable. As their study showed, other leading companies had the same problem of consumers not making the association between a company and its products. Almost everyone knew the premiere word processor at the time, WordStar, yet no one knew that MicroPro made the software. The company never appeared on the radar screen. Likewise, consumers participating in the study knew dBASE, the predominant database product, but no one had ever heard of its maker, Ashton-Tate. The key to Hanson’s and Microsoft’s success was to have a naming strategy for Microsoft products, and for the company to enforce the brand. Instead of “Word” as a word processor, it would be called “Microsoft Word.” Multiplan, Microsoft’s spreadsheet, would be called “Microsoft Excel.” Hanson knew that products and product versions would come and go but that the Microsoft brand name would live on. Microsoft-and Bill Gates-would be the hero. Not everyone shared Hanson’s affection for brand awareness. In fact, he ran into an uproar with the developers. Naming strategies, branding strategies, whatever those were-the developers didn’t know, and didn’t care. It all sounded like grandiose flackery to them. The developers, as a whole, still wanted to call their new windowing system the Interface Manager. That was a name they had come up with and it was the flag they were carrying. In the developers minds, this was their product. They had built it-not Hanson. But from a marketing standpoint the name sucked, big time, and that’s all Hanson cared about. Knowing they wanted to keep Microsoft as the hero, Hanson, Edstrom, and the corporate communications team began brainstorming new names for I.M. No one, including Hanson, understood what a windowing environment was. There were different products from companies like VisCorp, and they all had hip names like “VisiOn,” but the names had nothing to do with the product itself. To sort through the confusion, Hanson took all of the editorial clips and news stories on these windowing systems and looked to see what they had in common. Consistently, the press was calling this new thing a windowing shell, a windowing manager, or a windowing system. If Microsoft wanted to set a de facto standard in the industry, the logical generic name to call the new product was “Windows.” The developers held onto Interface Manager. Gates didn’t want to get involved. He insisted that Hanson convince the others that the name should be Windows. But Hanson was stonewalled. To the developers, Hanson was the “cosmetics guy,” the guy who knew nothing about computers or software and sure as hell wasn’t in a position to name their product. Frustrated, Hanson went back to Gates. “I’ve given everybody the logic on this and nobody is buying it,” he said. ” You have to make the decision. I can’t convince them. We’ve got a naming strategy, which is based on our branding strategy. Our branding strategy is based on how we want to position Microsoft. Now we’ve got this ‘thing’ that fits within our naming strategy, and the only logical thing to call it, if we believe in all this crap we’ve been talking about, is ‘Windows.’ There is no other name. Just before the Windows documentation was to be printed, Gates the oracle spoke. Then the developers lined up behind him with their support. So now they had a name, but Hanson and Edstrom still weren’t sure whether Microsoft was ready to make an announcement. A technical neophyte, Hanson had no idea what was realistic timing on the product side. In his experience in the food and cosmetics industries, when someone promised a product would be delivered on a particular date, the schedule was simply a function of safety testing. It was guaranteed. Hanson’s job was never to question the date, but to line up behind it and salute. Edstrom, coming out of Tektronix, was technically more savvy, and she provided Hanson with wisdom born of experience. Hanson would walk out of a meeting with developers thinking everything was “golden.” Edstrom would look at Hanson and shake her head. “Big problem,” she’d explain. “This stuff isn’t going to be ready.” Hanson remained unconcerned. From a communications standpoint, everything seemed to be in order. But Edstrom knew better. Sure she told him, if nothing went wrong, if there were no bugs in the software, if the gods smiled, if the Red Sox won the World Series…the developers might make the date. But in the software industry…dream on. Gates, who should have known better, gave the go-ahead for Windows’s launch, and he sanctioned not one, but two announcements, a spectacular coming-out party for Microsoft as well as for Windows. The first would take place on November 10, in New York. Microsoft had successfully romanced twenty-four different computer manufacturers who would publicly pledge their support for Windows. Noticeably absent, however, was IBM. Big Blue didn’t care about graphics, and it wasn’t buying Windows. Despite IBM’s wariness, Microsoft was able to show that Windows would run on a slew of different machines. The beautiful part of the New York event was the twenty-four original equipment manufacturers, OEM’s, which Microsoft had recruited to the Windows bandwagon, assembled together. Many of these companies were blood rivals who normally wouldn’t be within spitting distance of each other. Yet Microsoft, in the name of what must be one helluva new product, was able to pull them all together. As Edstrom, Hanson, and Gates saw it, this was the shape of things to come-Microsoft became “the” company to watch!!! The second phase-the pièce de résistance-would be Las Vegas, the computer industry’s biggest trade show, COMDEX. . . . Begun in 1979, COMDEX, the computer distributors exhibition, had become the scene, where industry go-getters had to be, and where opinion makers and trendsetters gathered in full force to see and be seen. By 1983, it was a huge phenomenon, and with all that ballyhoo, it was very difficult for any company, much less a small upstart like Microsoft, to be noticed at all. Once Hanson knew that Microsoft would launch Windows at COMDEX, the entire communications department embarked on a mad frenzy. Gates had made it perfectly clear that the launch of Windows was the Super Bowl, and Gate didn’t want to play… he wanted to win. Knowing that, Hanson’s goal was two-fold: to make Windows a Phenomenon, and to create the buzz in the industry with Microsoft. Immediately, they faced huge obstacles. For starters, all of Las Vegas was booked solid. Hanson called Bob Lorsch, a marketing mastermind, with a Los Angeles-based sales promotion agency whom Hanson had used in crisis mode at Neutrogena. Hanson said, ” I need to own Las Vegas during this event. I don’t care what the rules are. We need to rise above the clutter.” Then Hanson warned his team, “We’re never going to get this done working through the normal channels. The normal channels are all taken. I mean this is an insane launch plan. I need to bring in somebody who can make the impossible happen. And you need to trust me. This guy is going to scare you because he is a little off the wall.” When people showed up in Las Vegas, they were awe struck. There wasn’t a taxi on the Strip not promoting Windows. Stickers were all over the back seats of cabs; the drivers wore Windows buttons. These same buttons were handed out at the booths of every hardware manufacturer that supported Windows. Each button had a number on it. If people could find someone else with a number that matched theirs, they could go to the Microsoft booth together and receive software, gifts and a bombast of Windows hype. In a Disnyesque mode, Lorsch also created wuppies-little fuzzy mice holding Windows flags-to promote Microsoft’s new mouse. Lorsch was a magician who believed anything was possible and simply wouldn’t take no for an answer. He managed to get Windows 1.0 pillowcases placed in 20,000 Las Vegas hotel rooms. When half-asleep COMDEX attendees turned down their beds at night, they were astonished to find their pillows instructing them to stop by Microsoft’s booth. Windows 1.0 marketing materials were subversively slipped under hotel doors. Every day, during the entire week of COMDEX, Microsoft had new and different promotional materials delivered to the hotel rooms. Microsoft’s competitors were crazed, but Gates and his marketing crew were ecstatic. People couldn’t go to bed without Windows. Microsoft had a Windows sign right outside the front lobby of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Microsoft was dancing in the end zone. As for Hanson himself, he was accustomed to trade shows in Las Vegas, but not to computer conventions. He was used to walking down the strip talking to beauty editors and fashion models from Vogue and Vanity Fair. Now he was staring at programmers with pocket protectors. Microsoft’s colossal party at Caesar’s Palace-suits and ties were the order of the day-brought Hanson somewhat closer to his own element. Naturally, it was Hanson who had demanded that the Windows developers show up for the party looking like IBMers, or not showing up at all. Only a handful of the Windows 1.0 developers toed the line. Most boycotted the party to protest the dress code-many didn’t even own a suit. Still, it was a roaring success. Microsoft arranged for country singer Glen Campbell to show up for the soiree and give a speech. Dressed in cowboy boots, the “Rhinestone Cowboy” stood incongruously next to the world’s soon-to-be-most-famous computer geek. “I just wanted to welcome y’all here for the Microsoft party,” Campbell said in his Arkansas drawl. “And I just wanted to let you know this is my good buddy Bill gates.” The crowd laughed till it hurt. But the buzz was no joke. Because of this Hanson-inspired blitz, Microsoft went from being a player to being the player. Nobody had ever owned COMDEX this way before, and no company ever would again. Microsoft had reinvented and redefined the idea of “promotion,” with tens of thousands of dollars in tips for hotel bell clerks and housekeeping staffs alone. (All those pillowcases didn’t come cheap.) Microsoft had greased the palms of certain shift managers; other times it was a worker with a little entrepreneurial chutzpah. “You’d be amazed by the power held by doormen, head maids, housekeepers, and security guards.” Hanson said. “As well as the leads limo drivers can give you.” In total, Microsoft would spend $450,000. After that, COMDEX put policies in place requiring that companies go through the proper channels if they wanted paraphernalia in hotel rooms. From that point on, Gates did all of the announcements related to Windows, which seemed fitting, inasmuch as, by PR edict, he would personally get all the credit. At Gates keynote speech, the lights dimmed, and a spotlight followed him to center stage in front of a standing-room-only audience. His fingerprint-smudged glasses reflected the light. Dandruff dusted his collar. He looked like central casting’s idea of a technical genius, which was, of coarse, all part of the image being marketed. So when Gates stood there and promised that Microsoft would ship Windows in the spring of 1984, people believed him. The company had just spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to launch it, so of coarse it would ship. However, the developers actually doing the work back in Bellevue knew the truth was something quite different. Eller, Wood, and Remala, especially, knew the product would never ship by April 1984, because of coarse, Windows was “vaporware.” Gates’s COMDEX demo was little more than a videotape that flashed graphics on the screen in different windows. It barely contained any code, and what little code it did contain was riddled with bugs, but it looked better that VisiOn’s demo, and in this age of image, that’s what counted. In Microsoft’s initial surveys of COMDEX attendees arriving at the Las Vegas airport, only 10 percent of those polled had even heard of Windows, and no one understood what it was or why it was important. When Hanson’s team conducted their exit polls, public perception and awareness for Microsoft and Windows had grown to 90 percent-in one week. The company received its first television coverage, and people held off on VisiOn, waiting instead for Windows 1.0-the safe, quality buy. Developers stared calling VisiCorp, “VisiCorpse.” Microsoft crushed VisiOn and built infallible momentum for Windows. The Soft would emerge as a completely different company, not based on its technical merit, but on its marketing prowess. Gates would emerge a different person as well. He was on his way to pop-icon status. But a casualty of this change would be the attention he could pay to his technical people and to the actual development of Windows. Ironically, never had the programmer-CEO been less involved in his companies programming. This lack of involvement would wreak havoc during the entire two-year period it would take to get Windows out the door.
Accidental Empires
By Robert X. Cringely, Pages 264 - 267
The suits first appeared at Microsoft in 1980, right around the time of the IBM deal. Bill Gates knew that to achieve his goals, Microsoft would have to become a much larger company, with attendant big company systems. He didn’t know how to go about creating those systems, so he hired a president, Robert Towne, from an electronics company in Oregon called Tektronix, and a marketing communications whiz, Rowland Hanson, who had been instrumental in the success of Neutrogena soap. Towne lasted just over a year. The programmers quickly identified him as a dweeb and ignored him. Gates continually countermanded his orders. Hanson’s was a different story. He dealt in the black magic of image and quickly realized that the franchise at Microsoft was Bill Gates. Hanson’s main job would be to make Gates into an industry figure and then a national figure if Microsoft was to become the company its founder imagined it would be. The alternative to Gates was Paul Allen, but the co-founder was too painfully shy to handle the pressure of being in the public spotlight, while Gates looked forward to such encounters. Paul Allen’s idea of a public persona is sitting with his mother in front-row seats for home games of his favorite possession, the Portland Trailblazers of the NBA. Even with Gates, Hanson’s work was cut out for him. It would be a challenge to promote a nerd with few social skills, who was only marginally controllable in public situations and sometimes went weeks without bathing. Maybe Neutrogena soap was a fitting precedent. To his credit, by 1983, Hanson managed to get Gates’s face on the cover of Time magazine, though Gates was irked that Steve Jobs of Apple had made the cover before he did.
THE SECRET OF HIS SURF-CESS - FORMER MICROSOFT EXEC AND DOT-COM CONSULTANT IS STILL RIDING WAVES OF THE FUTURE
By KRISTIN DIZON, P-I reporter November 13, 2000 Publication: Seattle Post Intelligencer
Somewhere, between the six flights, the myriad meetings, and the gallon of coffee he drinks each day, an incidental thought infiltrated Rowland Hanson's mind one week in August. It happened while the high-tech entrepreneur and sought-after consultant was meeting with a dot.com CEO at a Seattle restaurant. "You know what I've checked out but I don't think they'll let you do is the ferries," mused Hanson, the former Microsoft marketing chief who coined the term "Windows" in 1983. "I'll bet I can surf the wave behind a ferry." That casual conversation has become a mission. And it's a metaphor for the way Hanson has combined his thirst for business with his passion for surfing. He eschews golf, the anointed sport of the business world, to take many of his associates and clients surfing near his Maui or Lake Sammamish homes. Surfing the unbridled wave behind a ferry of at least 11,500 horsepower requires analysis and a strategy, much like what it takes in Hanson's specialty of creating an image for a company brand. His reconnaissance so far has revealed that he'll need to drop in quickly after the ferry first shoves off when the wave is biggest. The greatest danger will be to not get sucked under the stern of the boat. Officials for the state ferry system and the U.S. Coast Guard, which sets and enforces navigational rules, say ferry-wake surfing, while not explicitly illegal, is strongly discouraged. If Hanson does it, he won't be riding the mythical perfect wave that some surfers search for all their lives, but it definitely will be different. Though the challenge of the ferry still looms, Hanson already has mastered smaller boat-created waves, carving up the wake from the back of his powerboat. Call it surfing, Lake Sammamish style. Surfer, but no slacker Hanson, 48, is a true believer, a devotee to the high temple of surfing. If there were a surf God, Hanson would burn incense and make offerings in supplication for great waves and great rides. But unlike most surfers, Hanson has never been a wave-chasing disciple of surfer slackerhood. He hasn't camped on someone's lawn or lived in a van for months at a time. Among surfers, Hanson is a rarity, a wave rider who happens to be a successful businessman. Or is it the other way around? While on Maui, where he spends almost half the year, Hanson surfs with men half his age. Most are bellhops, waiters, or other workers low on the totem pole of Hawaii's tourism industry. And they have no idea that this tan, muscular man, the one with the copious freckles, the one they fondly call "Pops," which Hanson detests, is an early veteran of Microsoft who is financially secure, with a capital S. Hanson still holds most of his original stock in the company, but he was successful before Microsoft, working for General Mills and Carnation until he was lured to an unknown software firm by the cosmetics company Neutrogena. In 1983, a head-hunting firm contacted Hanson to tell him about a little company near Seattle. "I said, first of all, where is Bellevue, Washington?" he recalls. "As far as I'm concerned, it's outer Siberia. And what is a Microsoft? I didn't even own a computer." But Hanson was impressed with the vision that Bill Gates laid out during their Sunday lunch. There was only one thing he didn't get why did Gates want him? Gates responded with a question: What is the difference between a moisturizer that costs $1 an ounce and one that costs $100 an ounce? Hanson replied that there was little difference, technically. It was all in the subtle art of creating an image and desire for a particular brand. That's why I want you, Gates said. "The guy made so much sense, and still, I didn't want to come," said Hanson, who had hoped to start his own business. "It's a testament to Bill Gates' persuasiveness. I literally said no for three months." According to the book, "Barbarians Led by Bill Gates," when most of the software developers wanted to call the company's new operating system Interface Manager, Hanson, the vice president for corporate communications, championed the name Windows. Hanson quickly immersed himself in his new Techworld, but adapting to Rainville wasn't easy for the self-described beach boy. "I was miserable," he said. So he coped by buying a home on Maui. (Yeah, he knows, rough life.) "Going to Maui and being able to surf is very important to me," he said. "It's my soul." But what to do about the times here, in oceanless Bellevue? If you're a problem solver like Hanson, you look at the Mastercraft powerboat at your dock, and you naturally think, "Surf's up!" Lake surfing On a sunny fall day, Hanson shows a reporter his lake-surfing method. It starts when he piles nine people into the back of his boat, which will kick up a 2.5- to 3-foot wave in its wake. He jumps in the water, holding his yellow board perpendicular to the boat. While he holds on to a 10-foot-long purple tow rope, Hanson's body reclines in the water while his feet rest on the board. When the boat starts moving, Hanson slams his ankles down hard onto the board and stands up. Then he pivots his body to face the boat. For a while, he uses the rope to catch some air, slice up and down the tube of the wave, and even do a 360. Then he pulls within a few inches of the boat and lets go of the rope. Voila! Boat surfing, and so close we can touch him. Five full minutes of surfing compared to, say, a natural wave ride of maybe 30 seconds enough to make your legs turn to Jell-O if you're not in shape. When he feels like it, Hanson simply hops onto the boat, reaches down, and grabs his still bobbing surfboard. Sure, it's not Hawaii or even Westport, but it's convenient and better than nothing. "If it's in your blood, it's in your blood. You find a way to surf," Hanson says. The surfing life The thrill of becoming one with the waves started as a form of minimalist baby-sitting. Hanson's two older brothers, both surfers, constantly dragged him to the beach. "They said, 'If we're going to have to watch you, here's aboard. You make a decision you can sit on the beach all day or you can surf.'" The brothers didn't give him any tips. "They said, 'Don't drown, or Mom and Dad will be mad'." He was 6. He could surf before he learned to ride a bike. At 8, Hanson became a junior lifeguard and got some true surfing lessons. Then he turned the tables on his babysitters. "I went to the other extreme. My brothers would want to leave and I refused to get out of the water. They'd have to paddle out and get me." In high school, Hanson was the thick-necked, beefy captain of the football team. Named to several all-star teams, he hoped to turn pro until he fractured his neck. His quarterback was George Allen, the former Republican governor of Virginia elected last week to a U.S. Senate seat from that state. Surfing as a theme runs through Hanson's life. He met his wife, Mary, with surfboard subterfuge. "Haven't I seen you before?" asked the high school senior of the freshman as they waited for waves to ride. He'd never seen her in his life, but the line worked. The couple has been married for 29 years. In the early days, with baby Vanessa in tow, they'd drive to Mexico for the weekend to surf. During the week, Hanson was a student at Loyola University and worked full-time as a security guard at an elementary school to support his family. After graduation, he went straight to the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania for his master's degree. "All of my friends, who were surfers, looked at me like, why would you possibly go to Philly? There's no surf," he said. Now, oldest daughter Vanessa Tormey is married to a surfer from Hawaii, and middle daughter Liberty Hanson's boyfriend is a surfer. Hanson jokingly says he needs to find a surfer for his youngest daughter, Corey. In demand Hanson's business acumen and extensive connections are such that start-ups woo him for advice or to sit on their boards. "He's definitely a hot commodity," said Glenn Ballman, founder and CEO of Onvia.com, which has Hanson on its advisory board. "The reason people want him is that he's seen so much and been through many experiences. He's got a proven track record and he's also a great deal of fun to work with." In earnest but with a hint of a laugh in his voice, Ballman said, "I hope he's not too well known because I don't want his time taken up by others. No offense, but I hope your article's buried on the last page." So why does a man keep working when he can afford to retire and just play? Why does Hanson, who has more than a million frequent-flier miles on United Airlines, spend his time crisscrossing the country on red-eyes, meeting people in airports for a few hours before hopping another jet for another destination for another meeting? Because the guy who was a computer novice when he landed at Microsoft has embraced the high-tech way. He left Microsoft after three years to start his own consulting business. Now he works mostly with start-ups seeking a foothold in the market and he thinks there's money to be made, in spite of recent stock plunges and dot-com casualties. "It's always something truly new, and it's having a major impact on how businesses conduct business and how people live their lives," Hanson says. "I couldn't sit on my lanai for two weeks at a time and surf on Maui if I didn't have e-mail." Not only does Hanson work 70 to 80 hours a week. He prefers thorny problems and challenges. "I love making things happen," he says. "Something that's very easy is not interesting to me. When things go awry, I'm much more motivated to stay up all night and fix them. If things are going well, I'm bored." He sleeps four to five hours a night to "get the most out of my life at all times." A typical day for Hanson starts at 4 a.m. He drinks a pot of coffee by 7 a.m. and starts a second one brewing. When he's in Hawaii, he eyes the surf in the early morning as he fires off e-mail, then heads to the beach when the waves look good. He's not a monster-wave or trick rider, but he's aggressive about taking on tough 10- to 15-foot waves, which can pummel and pin you under until your lungs burn for lack of air. He continues to use a short board while many men his age have switched to the gentler long board. And he likes the fact that every single wave is different. Like most surfers, Hanson says the feeling, the devotion, the purity of his sport can't really be communicated to outsiders. "It's one of the most peaceful, tranquil things. It's almost intoxicating," he says. "Surfing really is a cult. When you run into another surfer, the situation doesn't matter. You have a common bond." Shark phobia It's apropos that the man called a "water rat" by one of his daughters was born under the sign of Pisces. A bit unexpected is Hanson's fear of sharks, which obviously hasn't stopped him from mingling in their environment. While he's never been bitten, he did have a run-in with one about 10 years ago. Hanson was surfing at one of his favorite Maui beaches at dusk. As the last surfer in the water, waiting for a wave to ride into shore, he felt a bump on his board. "The first thing that goes through my mind is that I hit a rock," he says, pausing to build suspense. "Then, I realize" pause again "there's no rocks out here." Deep-throated, belly-firming chuckles erupt a winsome reaction now from a man who thought at the time he might become human sushi for Jaws. "And you're not supposed to splash. But what do I do? I take off for shore. It's one thing to tell somebody not to splash. It's another thing with a shark over there looking at you. Oh yeah, like I'm gonna be cool." "I have never paddled so fast in my life," Hanson says earnestly. "As I hit the beach, I kept running up the trail to my car." Regaling a group of friends and business clients with the tale over beers on his Lake Sammamish lakeside lawn, Hanson enacted one of the recommended techniques for dealing with a shark attack: you're supposed to fight back by punching the shark in the snout. Laughing, he says, "I'm just gonna fake to the left." Then he takes over the role of the shark: "Oh yeah, I've seen that hook before from the last guy I ate." Intense but laid back Hanson does have something in common with the object of his phobia: He sinks his teeth into his pursuits. Take tennis: Once he decided to play nearly a decade ago, he practiced nearly every day. "Rowland could hit the ball to the moon if he wanted," said Darrell Abang, a tennis pro at Bellevue's Pro Sports Club. "Once he focuses on something, he'll go until he can get as good as he'll get." Oxymoronic as it may seem, Hanson blends his trademark intensity and total focus with a down-to-earth attitude. "Given how successful he's been, my dad's not materialistic in his thinking," said oldest daughter Vanessa. Hanson's ways have rubbed off on her in more ways than one: Tormey is the marketing director for Inter@ctive Week, an online roundup of the wired world. "I think the beach lifestyle has followed him his whole life. Any person he meets he treats with the same level of respect," she says. Hanson has two stepbrothers who embody the full-time surfing lifestyle in Hawaii. One lives in his car and drives around looking for waves. The other lives in a shack without electricity or water and shaves surfboards for a living when not surfing. "They are very happy. They have few material things, but they have a lifestyle that they wouldn't trade for anything," Hanson says. "Most people don't understand that. But I don't think it's strange at all." While Hanson isn't planning to live similarly, he knows one thing: "I'll keep surfing till I die." And asked if he'll really surf the ferry wave, or even if it's possible, Hanson replies, "Oh, I'm going to do it. There's no question."
Hard Drive: Bill Gates and
the Making of the Microsoft Empire
by James Wallace and Jim Erickson
Pages 242-245
The promotional campaign for Word was part of an aggressive sales approach by Rowland Hanson, the newest member of the Microsoft management team. Before he arrived at Microsoft in early 1983, Hanson was vice president of marketing for Neutrogena Corporation, which made soap and other products. He had also been marketing manager for General Mills. Why not market software like the cosmetics industry marketed soap, he suggested, and provide some free samples? Hanson knew nothing about computers, but he did know a thing or two about soap and marketing. Gates’ decision to bring in an outsider to the computer industry reflected the growing emphasis he placed on marketing. Microsoft was in the midst of its transition from being a language and operating system company to one selling applications in a retail market. It was not enough just to develop good software–Microsoft had to make customers want to buy it, too. “If you think about it,” said Hanson, “who understands brands better than the cosmetics industry? Look at the halo around Clinique or Neutrogena. These companies are brand-dominated. If their brand isn’t strong, then nothing else matters, because there isn’t reality to cosmetics. Soap is soap.” Word was originally going to be released as Multi-Tool Word, a continuation of the Multi-Tool application product line that was to follow Multiplan. Hanson suggested a different product-naming strategy. It was important for a product to be identified by its brand name, he pointed out. Microsoft had to get its name associated with its products, just like Neutrogena. Hanson later elaborated on the concept in this way: “If you look back at some of the old articles that were written in the industry, you’ll see the word ‘Multiplan’ but no ‘Microsoft’ associated with it. That was because Multiplan was a stand-alone name. It started to take on its own meaning, beyond Microsoft, just like WordStar. People who wanted a word processing program knew the name ‘WordStar,’ but they could not have told you MicroPro was the company that made it.” Hanson wanted to make Microsoft the Sara Lee of the software industry. Everyone knew the Sara Lee brand, regardless of whether they were shopping for apple pie or pound cake. “The brand is the hero,” Hanson said. “People start to associate certain images with the brand, and that becomes much more important than any single product. What the consumer goods companies realized years ago was that the products come and go. You are going to have a product and it’s going to rise and fall. But if you can create a halo around a brand name and create equity in a brand, when you introduce new products under that brand halo, it becomes much easier to create synergy, momentum…We decided that we needed to make Microsoft the hero.” Gates immediately saw the logic of Hanson’s argument. As a result of Hanson’s efforts, the Multi-Tool names were thrown out. Taking their place were Microsoft Word, Microsoft Plan, Microsoft Chart, and Microsoft File. The strategy worked as Hanson had hoped. Word became known as a Microsoft product. Unfortunately, the first version of Word for PC was a fairly mediocre program, and reviews were mixed. Word was widely criticized for being too technical and difficult to learn. Sales, while healthy enough to put Word into the top 100 best-selling software products on the market, were below expectations.
Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry--and Made Himself the Richest Man in America
by Stephen Manes and Paul Andrews (pages 238-240)
Under Shirley, there was also a new push in marketing, spearheaded by Ballmer. The most visible mastermind was a new recruit who dated back to the waning days of the Towne era. A thirty-one-year-old marketeer on his way up, tall dapper, sun-loving Rowland Hanson was a veteran of Betty Crocker and Contadina and was currently making his mark at Neutrogena. He knew absolutely nothing about personal computers, he had absolutely no interest in them, he was getting ready to start his own business, and he was not about to listen to a headhunter’s suggestion that he take a day off to go up to rainy Seattle on a wild-goose chase. But somehow he found himself in the office of Bill Gates. Hanson asked why Gates had any interest in him at all, considering he knew nothing about computers or software. “You know,” Gates told him, “the only difference between a dollar-an-ounce moisturizer and a forty-dollar-an-ounce moisturizer is in the consumer’s mind. There is no technical difference in the moisturizers.” Hanson was impressed. “Well,” Gates went on, “I know that we will have the reality of the software. We will technically be the best software. But if people don’t believe it or people don’t recognize it, it won’t matter. While we’re on the leading edge of technology, we also have to be creating the right perception about our products and company, the right image. And right now I don’t think we’re doing that.” On the way up to Seattle, Hanson had been thinking “NFW. No way am I going to take this job.” On the way back he was thinking, “You know, these guys are on to something.” His conversation with the master convincer had Hanson hooked. Hanson’s courtship remarkably paralleled that of another marketing maven. John Sculley. Toward the end of 1982 Steve Jobs was beginning to recognize that to be successful, the Mac would have to appeal to people who didn’t already use computers and understand them. Apple would have to sell Macs like — well, like soft drinks. Sculley, a career Pepsi executive being groomed for chairman, was contacted by a headhunter about a search for a new chief executive at Apple. Sculley knew virtually nothing about computers –he had an Apple II+ but found it “more work to use than it was worth.” But he had liked to tinker with electronics as a kid. When he mentioned offhandedly he was going to meet with Steve Jobs, his nineteen-year-old daughter’s mouth dropped open: “You’re going to meet Steve Jobs?” she exclaimed. Sculley took note. In a cat-and-mouse courtship over the next few months, the two hit it off, the analytical, Ivy League corporate Sculley providing a perfect foil to Reed College dropout Jobs’s quicksilver intemperance and excitability. Still, despite millions of dollars on the table, Sculley was not convinced he wanted to work for Apple–until Jobs zinged him with the line “Do you want to spend the rest of you life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world.” It summed up the forty-two-year-old Sculley’s midlife crisis in one sentence; by May 1983–a month and a half before Towne was being shown the door at Microsoft–Sculley was at the helm of Apple. Sugared water, scented water…Bill Gates didn’t want to change the world, he wanted to rule it. As a vice president, corporate communications, Hanson saw his job as positioning Microsoft and its products in the marketplace–as the $40-an-ounce brand. Hanson embarked on market research and discovered that influential core users relied far more heavily on editorial coverage in computer magazines than on advertisements. So while competitors such as Lotus and Ashton-Tate squandered resources on television ads–something Hanson rejected as too wasteful–Microsoft painstakingly went to work rebuilding its corporate image. Hanson understood the value of public relations as well as anyone. His mentor at Neutrogena, Lloyd Cotsen, had built the company on a policy of influencing “opinion leaders”–dermatologists, beauty editors, people who wrote about skin care. Another of Hanson’s research studies was aimed at finding out how Microsoft was perceived among magazine editors–who were then carefully cultivated in the months that followed. Not long after the redesign of the Microsoft corporate “look” to forest green packaging and the “bibbit” logo whose horizontal lines vaguely suggested IBM’s, Hanson discovered the look wasn’t working. On the strength of focus group research, Hanson switched to “friendlier” boxes, emphasizing people rather than merely the name of the product and coding color–red for Apple and Blue for IBM. It was Hanson who killed the “multitool” name and cut a deal with David Bunnell’s PC World to enclose a sample disk of Microsoft Word in every subscription copy of the October 1983 issue–just the way cosmetics companies hawked their wares in women’s magazines. It was Hanson who pushed to make Microsoft a brand name by putting the corporate identity first and using a generic name for virtually every product. It wasn’t Word, it was Microsoft Word. It wasn’t Chart but Microsoft Chart. Had he been on board earlier, Multiplan would have been Microsoft Spreadsheet, and MS-DOS would have been Microsoft DOS, but he was too late for that. Hanson had to settle for ads reminding customers that Microsoft “designed the MS-DOS operating system that tells the IBM PC how to think.” Hanson’s marketing efforts were about to culminate in an amazing crescendo. Interface Manager was dead; in its place was Windows. Although a strong contingent in the company actually preferred the name Interface Manager, Hanson tirelessly hammered away on the subject in an e-mail to Gates. A product name should communicate a product feature, Hanson insisted: Windows was logical because Windows was what you saw on the computer screen. An interface manager — come on, what was that? Bill Gates finally gave Windows the green light, barely in time to revise the PR material.