One of the world’s most successful consumer products is also one of the world’s most neglected mass-market brands.

Such is the golden fate of the Windows operating system. The software produced $13bn (€9bn, £7.3bn) of operating profit for Microsoft in its last fiscal year. Yet even as the money was pouring in, Windows became an easy target for a devastating guerrilla advertising campaign: Apple’s “I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC” ads, which painted Microsoft’s software as unstable, exposed to security threats and exceedingly dull.