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In a briefing with Dennis Publishing journalists, Microsoft said it no longer plans to focus on individual products, rather than the benefits of the Windows brand as a whole.

"In the next 12 to 18 months we'll be ready to talk about the Windows brand and its values in a much bigger way," said John Curran director of the Windows Client Group at Microsoft UK.

"It's not really so much about being aggressive on Windows Vista, it's about the Windows brand."

Curran said the Windows message will span the company's gamut of products

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and services, including Windows Mobile and Windows Live. "If you look at the integration across products, we can be compatible with anything you want to do," he said. "We can answer in a much more comprehensive way than any of our competitors."

"In the past our our story has been more or less siloed," he said of separate marketing campaigns for operating systems, mobile and web services. "We need to make sure everyone's getting the total Windows message."

"Our goals are different to our competitors," Curran added. "We want to be focusing on what we can do for consumers."

So why, then, did the Bill Gates/Jerry Seinfeld advert that kicked off a Windows advertising campaign reported to cost $300 million, fail to mention even a single product?

Curran laughed, and suggested the advert was merely the first of a series. "It's an interesting discussion we're going to kick off," he said.

Find out why Stuart Turton's taken a shine to the shoe shop advert here