Microsoft marketing chief Mich Matthews is leaving the company

By Tom Warren, on 30th Mar 11 6:42 pm with 18 Comments

Microsoft's SVP of Marketing Mich Mathews headlines at Cannes Lions 2010

Mich Matthews the Senior vice president for Microsoft’s Central Marketing Group, is leaving the company after 22 years.

Matthews confirmed to AdAge that she announced her retirement last night to company executives. Matthews oversees more than $1 billion of Microsoft’s annual marketing spend. Speaking to AdAge, Matthews said she made the decision to quit Microsoft over the Christmas holidays. “Twenty-two years in one place … I feel like I’ve done so much” and “frankly it’s time to do something new. It’s half a lifetime. Microsoft was chapter one and it’s time for a chapter two.” She said she needs a break as well. “It’s going to be awesome to actually get off the grid.”

Matthews joined Microsoft in 1989 as a consultant in the UK. She later went on to lead Microsoft’s Corporate Public Relations function in 1993. Matthews was made an officer at Microsoft in 1999. She has held a succession of marketing positions in Microsoft including vice president of Corporate Communications and vice president of its Central Marketing Organization.

Matthew’s departure comes months after two other Microsoft executives announced their plans to leave Microsoft. Bob Muglia, president of Microsoft’s Server and Tools business, announced earlier this month that he will leave the firm in the Summer. Microsoft’s Ray Ozzie stepped down from his role as chief software architect in October and is currently planning to retire from Microsoft after a transition period. Microsoft’s Windows marketing chief Brad Brooks also left the company recently, following a nine year tenture.

  • Stevie

    She had to go. It was obvious she wasn’t getting it done. Microsoft’s recent struggle is largely a PR problem more than technical. Look at the way people comment about MS in blogs and even in real life conversations. They have no clue about how good MS’s products are (e.g. W7, IE8/9 and now WP7) yet they trash MS only because they think it’s a trendy thing to do. This is especially true among young consumers (students and sub 30 yo) who don’t have much exposure to the real world corporate environment (which usually require Windows and a productivity-over-fashion priority). This is essentially due to poor marketing. Very poor.

    • Tom

      She did a great job of marketing — as a fifth columnist for Microsoft’s competitors. It’s like they planted her there to waste 99% of Microsoft’s marketing budget.

      The next person might not be much better — but it’s hard to be worse.

    • http://twitter.com/oolong2 oolong2

      To be fair I think most of the anti-Microsoft nonesense is more due to culture and a testimate to Apple’s PR success rather than Microsoft’s PR failure.

      Although the WP7 launch was pretty abysmal…

  • http://www.timacheson.com/ Tim Acheson

    Microsoft have some amazing products and services, yet many of these are like the industry’s best kept secrets! SkyDrive, Zune.net, etc.

    • GP007

      Well they’re finally moving skydrive into the center of things, like the future Mango update that brings full skydrive integration with all office docs not just OneNote. Finally giving people a feature close to Sharepoint but for free.

    • http://www.timacheson.com/ Tim Acheson

      Yes — things are starting to get interesting!

  • Vardanian

    Her marketing efforts seems to be non working. No one fascinated by MS products and services.

  • http://twitter.com/TorVez Victor Chavez

    Finally. MSFT’s largest failure right now is marketing and PR. It killed the Zune, Kin and soon would have killed Windows Phone 7. They have some amazing products that no one knows about. Everyone believes that everything that comes out of MSFT is the same quality as Vista, Windows Mobile 6.5 and IE6. The only reason the XBox has done so well is because the Halo franchise got them noticed. I’m really hoping they use this as a springboard to get some real advertising and PR going (you know, ones that makes sense and actually SHOW what the products do).

    • Tom

      A step in the right direction.

      But one more step is needed to turn the ship around. A new CEO.

  • Wourelia

    Finally. I was wondering why it took so long…

  • GP007

    I’m sure some out there wanna make a bigger deal out of the management level departures from MS, but honestly it’s a good thing in the end. Lots of these people have been there for a very long time and you need to refresh things and let some of the younger gen take over. Specially more of the techie side and less of the marketing people please. At least SteveB has the right idea there when he said he’d promote more tech people to management and not just good sales folks.

    • Mark

      Ballmer was the one who promoted the sales people over the technologists in the first place. The person most in need of replacing at MS is Steveb himself.

  • Manish

    She had to go. It was obvious she wasn’t getting it done. Microsoft’s recent struggle is largely a PR problem more than technical.

  • Why o’ why

    Windows Phone 7 Series was the initial name of Microsoft’s new mobile OS. Instead of xPhone (after xBox) or zPhone or Zune Phone (after the brand Zune), they picked Windows Phone 7 Series. Whether or not she was asked to leave should not be of debate…Windows Phone 7 Series, which competes against iOS and Android speaks for itself…as they say, ‘nough said!

    • Mark

      Matthews was useless, no question there. And I doubt she left voluntarily. But part of the problem is that marketing needs to have total control over product naming and messaging company-wide. That’s never been the case at MS. Product groups rule. That needs to change. Otherwise, the VP of marketing is primarily a figurehead position.

    • Mark

      Matthews was useless, no question there. And I doubt she left voluntarily. But part of the problem is that marketing needs to have total control over product naming and messaging company-wide. That’s never been the case at MS. Product groups rule. That needs to change. Otherwise, the VP of marketing is primarily a figurehead position.

  • Peter

    peter
    there is one aspect of microsoft that is terrible and brings down everything else:
    marketing.

  • Lolo

    good ridance