As if on cue...well, actually very much according to the click of the clock...Microsoft's Zune players went dark on New Year's Eve. It was a missed opportunity to build the brand.It had to do with the 30-gigabyte devices getting confused with leap year (or something), yielding an error message instead of a favorite song. The fix, dutifully noted via a header buried low on Zune's web site, read "Zune 30 FAQ: Trouble with your Zune 30? The fix is simple," was actually simple. That is, once you let the battery drain and then plugged your gizmo into your computer long after January 1, 2009 was well underway.I don't mean to slight Microsoft for the glitch. It's easy to complain about the company, and I'm happy to do it fairly often, but technical snafus are a part of technical devices. Stuff breaks down or otherwise disappoints in every product category. What merits mention, I think, is how Microsoft responded to the problem. They fixed it, instead of approaching it as an opportunity to build the brand.Zune users are a devoted lot, I'm told...all 14 of them, or however small the small segment might be. Microsoft has blown through millions trying to grow that base, but its marketing is usually more notable for its inane efforts to mimic the iPod. It literally can't buy awareness that is relevant and cool.So why didn't they go to town with its very own "Y2K for Zunes" moment?How about giving away "free minutes" to all current users?Quickly organizing a "2009-certified" sale at retail? How about a social media campaign to ask people what song they wishes they'd loaded on New Year's Eve, or what they would do if given an "extra day?" Or how about something wild? Or whatever. Approaching the problem like a technical issue that needed to be fixed was evident of Microsoft's larger problem: Where are its marketers when they're not busy trying to knock off the competition's marketing?
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