Lame PR Responses #34,223(b)

When independent blogger Mary Jo Foley, who knows more about Microsoft than Microsoft does, interviewed the company’s new Corporate VP of its Searching and Advertising Group recently, she was told that Microsoft had recently launched an ad-funded version of Microsoft Works, the application suite you think will be a cheap alternative to Office but turns out not to be.

She couldn’t find it online anywhere so, she asked Microsoft PR. Which is always a mistake:

I’ve asked Microsoft for more information on the new ad-funded Works suite. No word back yet. Update: Even though Microsoft’s own vice president discussed the product, no one will talk. The official comment, via a Microsoft spokeswoman: “We’re always looking at innovative ways to provide the best productivity tools to our customers, but have nothing to announce at this time.”

Agh. These kinds of mealy-mouthed, knee-jerk-and-yet-probably-took-all-day-to-form, smug, self-promoting-and-yet-information-free responses drive me nuts. How many people had input on that particular phrase?  Thirty? How many emails had to exchange hands in the crafting? Forty? And how, exactly, does this help the journalist? Or, for that matter, the reader?

And don’t get me started on how a VP statement (“Microsoft Works has already been released as an ad-funded product”) is then throttled into submission as a slab of slippery PR perch, flailing on the floor of the meaningless drivel wet-market. How dysfunctional is that?

Poor Ms. Foley. Spare a thought for someone who has dedicated themselves to trying to make some sense of Redmond’s utterances. I only have to sit through the occasional PowerPoint barrage of buzzwords, cliches and tautologies spewing from the mouths of identikit Microsoft promoters wearing Joe 90 glasses. She has to do it on a regular basis.

» Microsoft Works to become a free, ad-funded product | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com