I was recently asked to catch up online to discuss product promotion by an Ehrenberg-Bass Institute contact, and without thinking I mentioned that I’d send the Zoom link over. When we met online, my chat partner made a remark that it was funny I didn’t think about using Skype. True, as we were just going to chat. We didn’t need any fancy features. So, the issue was not about the product, as Skype was fit for our purpose. Yes, why didn’t I think of Skype?
Skype is predominantly known for one-on-one and group conversations and I used it a lot in the past before Zoom’s arrival to talk about research and project collaborations, and on personal level, to chat with friends all over the world. Having seen episodes of Catfish: The TV Show in the past – Skype’s ringtone is also deeply ingrained in my mind as it was the platform used by Nev Schulman to connect with catfish victims and the perpetrators. It’s probably still Skype’s strongest Distinctive Brand Assets.
So, why didn’t I think of Skype easily in that usage situation?
It made me realise that this is an example of why mental availability is important. It’s not an issue of brand awareness, as I am aware of Skype and had used it extensively in the past. The brand wasn’t triggered in the moment that mattered – Skype just didn’t come to mind easily for that point of usage. As the Category Entry Point was activated, Zoom was far more easily retrieved in my mind as that is the platform widely used at the University.
It’s also not an issue of physical availability – as I have Skype installed on my computer at home, on my work computer, as well as on my iPhone. By the fact that my chat partner also mentioned about Skype, he also had the app so he would’ve been open to using Skype instead of Zoom.
So what happened to Skype?
Skype was created in 2003 by computer programmers and entrepreneurs in northern Europe. In 2005, it was purchased by eBay, and then eventually by Microsoft who bought it for $8.5 billion. Without clear marketing support, the product trundled along and was beaten by the likes of Zoom, WhatsApp, Webex, FaceTime – and even by its own sibling app, Microsoft Teams – during the Covid years and beyond.
In March 2020, Microsoft reported that Skype had 40 million daily active users which had dropped down to 33 million in 2024 according to 6sense. Compare these figures to Teams, which increased its monthly users from 250 million in July 2021 to over 300 million in Q1 2023. There are differing figures for Skype’s market share: 1.7% according to 6sense and 6% according to Sci-Tech-Today. How the mighty have fallen!
Skype’s downfall serves an example of brands that are built, traded, and managed without sufficient marketing support. Within tech and engineering, marketing is often considered as something that is fluffy and unnecessary – avoidable expenses without clear ROI. Think about how marketing is portrayed in Dilbert cartoons over the years. Perhaps it is a reflection of some parts of the tech and engineering sector, that a good product would speak for itself and it doesn’t need to be promoted, advertised, supported, or “misrepresented” by marketing. I can find a contemporary example in Tesla’s refusal to actively advertise its electric vehicles. Marketing is still often misunderstood.
We can contrast this to the way that the late Steve Jobs managed Apple and its products. He didn’t run Apple merely as a tech company – an approach still carried on by Tim Cook. Marketing activities, which include building mental and physical availability, are integral in Apple’s success. It was not just Apple’s great products that made the company successful, but also the way that their products were distributed and the brilliant (and not so great) advertising campaigns across media platforms over the years.
In 2021, Skype’s downfall was parodied on TV. The skit somehow highlights the possible thought process that companies have when their products fail: there must be something wrong with the product, or lacking the features that the competitors have – when perhaps the more straightforward question should have been whether the product has been sufficiently supported by good marketing to survive in the market. I have written about this as well in a post in 2023.
Microsoft missed the golden opportunity to promote Skype when we were all cooped up in our own home during the pandemic. Microsoft could have positioned Skype across corporate sectors so that the app would be used for one-on-one conversations and group catch-ups alongside Teams. Computer and smart phone users who have Skype installed could have been nudged so that we could remember the app for any need that can be fulfilled by the app. The list goes on.
Or, perhaps Microsoft should do the merciful action by retiring Skype and supporting Teams as the app for its communication platform. A brand or a product that’s not sufficiently supported by marketing and fails should not shoulder all the blame for its demise.