The Branding Genius of Cowpilot: New Coke and Jaguar Are No Longer the Champs
January 6, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
We are beavering away on our new Telegram Notes series. I opened one of my newsfeeds and there is was. Another gem of a story from PCGamer. As you may know, PCGamer inspired this bit of art work from the and AI system. I thought I would have a “cow” when I saw. Here’s the visual gag again:
Is that cow standing in its output? Could that be a metaphor for “cowpilot” output? I don’t know. Qwen, like other smart software can hallucinate. Therefore, I see a semi-sacred bovine standing in a muddy hole. I do not see AI output. If you do, I am not sure you are prepared for the contents about which I shall comment; that is, the story from PCGamer called “In a Truly Galaxy-Brained Rebrand, Microsoft Office Is Now the Microsoft 365 Copilot App, but Copilot Is Also Still the Name of the AI Assistant.”
I thought New Coke was an MBA craziness winner. I thought the Jaguar rebrand was an even crazier MBA craziness winner. I thought the OpenAI smart software non mobile phone rebranding effort that looks like a 1950s dime store fountain pen was in the running for crazy. Nope. We have a a candidate for the rebranding that tops the leader board.
Microsoft Office is now the M3CA or Microsoft 365 Copilot App.
The PCGamer write up says:
Copilot is the app for launching the other apps, but it’s also a chatbot inside the apps.
Yeah, I have a few. But what else does PCGamer say in this write up?
An MBA study group discusses the branding strategy behind Cowpilot. Thanks, Qwen. Nice consistent version of the heifer.
Here’s a statement I circled:
Copilot is, notably, a thing that already exists! But as part of the ongoing effort to juice AI assistant usage numbers by making it impossible to not use AI, Microsoft has decided to just call its whole productivity software suite Copilot, I guess.
Yep, a “guess.” That guess wording suggests that Microsoft is simply addled. Why name a product that causes a person to guess? Not even Jaguar made people “guess” about a weird square car painted some jazzy semi hip color. Even the Atlanta semi-behemoth slapped “new” Coke on something that did not have that old Coke vibe. Oh, both of these efforts were notable. I even remember when the brain trust at NBC dumped the peacock for a couple of geometric shapes. But forcing people to guess? That’s special.
Here’s another statement that caught my dinobaby brain:
Should Microsoft just go ahead and rebrand Windows, the only piece of its arsenal more famous than Office, as Copilot, too? I do actually think we’re not far off from that happening. Facebook rebranded itself “Meta” when it thought the metaverse would be the next big thing, so it seems just as plausible that Microsoft could name the next version of Windows something like “Windows with Copilot” or just “Windows AI.” I expect a lot of confusion around whatever Office is called now, and plenty more people laughing at how predictably silly this all is.
I don’t agree with this statement. I don’t think “silly” captures what Microsoft is attempting to do. In my experience, Microsoft is a company that bet on the AI revolution. That turned into a cost sink hole. Then AI just became available. Suddenly Microsoft has to flog its business customers to embrace not just Azure, Teams, and PowerPoint. Microsoft has to make it so users of these services have to do Copilot.
Take your medicine, Stevie. Just like my mother’s approach to giving me cough medicine. Take your medicine or I will nag you to your grave. My mother haunting me for the rest of my life was a bummer thought. Now I have the Copilot thing. Yikes, I have to take my Copilot medicines whether I want to or not. That’s not “silly.” This is desperation. This is a threat. This is a signal that MBA think has given common sense a pink slip.
Stephen E Arnold, January 6, 2026
Comments
Got something to say?
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
