Office 2010: Microsoft Seeking ‘Road Warriors’

Here’s an interesting tidbit out of Redmond: Microsoft is looking for “Road Warriors” to work with their New Zealand branch. The deal? Up to $43,000, but you’ll have to hustle around for four months touting the awesomeness of Office 2010 Suite. Think you’re up for the task?

Microsoft is nearly daring you to try and do this, as though it’s the impossible.

Think you’ve got what it takes to be a Microsoft Office 2010 Road Warrior? If you do, a four-month contract and up to $43,000 could be yours as part of a new campaign to deliver the Office 2010 message to New Zealand businesses. The search is now on for five Road Warriors to work with Ingram Micro and Express Data. The mission: to each visit 200 medium-sized businesses around the country to champion the benefits of the upcoming Office 2010 productivity suite, while sharing their experience with others via social media.

Bloggin’ Up Office 2010?

Okay, so what does that mean exactly? I think Microsoft is looking for over-exuberant marketing whizzes to pack up their bags, make a bunch of excited speeches, and BLOG about it. They admit that the job will be “frenetic” and only for the “right salesperson”, but honestly, It doesn’t seem like this is the approach that Microsoft should be taking about their software.

“A key factor [of the Road Warrior program] is a command of social media tools…” along with the responsibility to “present [Office] to customers and document their experience.”

There’s a bit of an English grammar problem here. Are we talking about the Road Warrior documenting their experience, or the experience the customer had dealing with Microsoft software (a-la the Mojave Experiment)? Let’s go with the former, since it seems less weird.

Let me picture how this would work: After an event, the spokesperson takes a bunch of digital pictures, uploads them to Facebook and tweets about it. Okay. So, who’ll be following him or her? Why would they be following? More importantly, if Microsoft is looking to market the suite out to business and consumers alike, what businesses are letting their employees use social networking, and what consumers have an undying affection for Office software that’d they follow a marketing spokesperson on their Twitter feed?

Maybe I don’t have a solution to the problem, but I seriously doubt that this is the way to get people excited about another speed bump in a long line of nearly-redundant Office upgrades.

That being said: if evangelizing Microsoft sounds like the sort of thing you’d like to get involved in (and if you do, come back and let us know how it went) you have ’till February 18th to get your application in. March 2nd marks the choosing of the 5 and from there on, it’s a mystery.