…your only only goal in the world should be to develop loyalty and passion.

Passion comes first. It means energy, enthusiasm, endorsement and word-of-mouth.

Then comes loyalty: it brings commitment to your product, your company, and your message. It brings forgiveness for problems or mistakes (see Apple’s iPhone reception issues and Blackberry’s first touch-screen device: consumers stayed with the brands because they’re loyal, and therefore forgiving).

If you develop passionate and loyal consumers, you will develop evangelists.

And business — and life! — become a whole lot easier if you have evangelists.

First some numbers, then an analysis:

Microsoft vice president of communications Frank X. Shaw recently posted some fascinating figures on his company blog:

• Microsoft has sold 150 million Windows 7 licenses in the first 8 months of its availability. That’s 600,000 per day, or one every seven seconds.
• In 2008, less than 10 percent of all netbooks in the U.S. ran Windows. In 2009? That number was more than 90 percent. Microsoft has conquered netbooks after a terribly slow start.
• Microsoft’s Xbox Live has 23 million subscribers. Netflix has 16 million.
• The excellent Bing search engine had 21.4 million users in the year since its launch.
• There 360 million Hotmail users around the world, nearly double that of Gmail.

The San Jose State University business professor Randall Stross wrote a terrific New York Times piece this week analyzing these numbers in a Wall Street context. Among many interesting statements, he said:

• Microsoft’s closing stock price last Friday was 55 percent below where it was in January 2000. (Think about that — nearly a decade of good work, and your stock price less than half of what it was!)
• By contrast, Apple’s stock price is up 829 percent over the same time period.
• Microsoft earned $4.52 billion over the last quarter. Apple: $3.25 billion. Google: $1.8 billion.
• And yet, judging from the stock price (the single most important criteria in this case), investors are showing Microsoft no “love.”

I will tell you why:

For all of its sales success — Windows 7, Office 2010, Microsoft Xbox, the motion sensing gaming product Kinect — Microsoft has little to no energy among consumers.

People don’t talk about Microsoft the way they talk about Apple, Google, or even HTC. Or Amazon. Or Acer. Or Canon. Or — and this is a real indictment — Palm.

People aren’t excited about Microsoft. Haven’t been in years.

Revenue and profits are one thing. But they don’t drive consumer passion and energy.

Rather, in technology, it’s consumer energy which leads almost single-handedly to everything that is important:

Consumer energy drives media energy.

Media energy drives investor energy.

Investor energy drives stock price, which drives everything in big tech.

Add it all up, and consumer energy drives everything.

Why does Microsoft have so little consumer energy?

1. Because it’s not talking to consumers enough. When Microsoft ran the I’m a PC ads that featured young, happy shoppers walking out of Best Buy with Windows computers, it was a coup. These ads marked the first time Microsoft outworked Apple in front of consumers in a decade or longer. They were gaining traction. But these ads were replaced quickly with quirkier, artsier, vaguer spots. They should have stuck with the retail pieces. Why? How long did Apple stick to the I’m a Mac ads? Years. Because they worked so incredibly well. Microsoft had a chance to do something similar — different shoppers, different retail environments, different PC brands — but  for some reason, the company ran away from success.
2. It’s not saying enough of the right things to consumers. The focus should be on price — a huge differentiator from Apple — and a dramatically improved user experience. Imagine the same young, attractive, hip-looking people saying this: Wow, Windows is so easy to use now…Check out this beautiful Powerpoint, and for half the price of doing it on a Mac! Think that would be effective?!

There’s no consumer energy unless you work hard to create it.

And you create it by talking to consumers relentlessly in compelling ways.

The best consumer electronics were not first in their category. Whether your products or your marketing, it is not necessary to be first. It is only necessary to improve (even if only slightly) on what already is working.

Newsweek.com runs a piece today about why the iPad has not yet killed the Kindle.

Six weeks ago, Seth Godin (one of our top business thinkers) said it was time for Amazon to panic about the iPad, and price the Kindle at $49.

In response to Godin, in early June, I wrote that Amazon should not panic. Far from it. Amazon should act like the market leader in digital reading, and push its advantages over the iPad.

See, the iPad is a digital Swiss Army knife — a jack of all trades. It’s good at email, web browsing, photo viewing, movie watching, and lots of other things. And it also lets people read electronic books.

The Kindle, conversely, is a big, sharpened knife, with a single focus: book reading.

Book readers — book enthusiasts — aren’t buying the iPad to read books. They’re buying the Kindle.

Here’s another, bolder, prediction: Apple is simply focused on too many things — from music labels to computers to mobile applications to antenna problems to its new mobile ad platforms — to get great at electronic books.

The Kindle, meanwhile, has the entire focus of Amazon.com. It’s the only product they make!

The iPad will never be better than the Kindle at digital book reading.

Given each products’ circumstances, it’s just not possible.

…is simplicity.

Of usage instructions.

Of marketing.

Of language.

Of press releases.

Of communications platforms.

Buried on the bottom of page B5 of yesterday’s Wall Street Journal was a short piece about Sharp’s tablet PC announcement.

In the second paragraph, the piece mentioned similar devices from Apple, Acer, and Toshiba.

The upcoming Sharp tablet wasn’t getting much love here. (Remember, Apple’s iPad announcement was on the front page of nearly every paper in America.)

It’s getting no love, because it’s not interesting:

• Sharp is relatively late to the game, but that’s ok. Apple wasn’t first either. Far from it.
• Sharp’s products are generally not memorable. Also ok. A lot of average products sell well thanks to decent marketing.
• Sharp doesn’t have a well defined focus in consumer electronics. No ok. Ask someone what kind of products Sharp makes, and see how long it takes them to answer.
• Sharp doesn’t tell a good story (in fact, I can’t think of a single one). Also no ok.
• Sharp doesn’t talk to consumers. Sharp doesn’t market much. This is the issue most responsible for Sharp’s problems. If you want to sell consumer electronics in this difficult marketplace, you’ve GOT to keep talking people in interesting and creative ways.

There’s your recipe for getting a big product announcement confined to the bottom of page B5.

Three-dimensional televisions are far from a sure thing.

There is nobody better at teaching consumers — and media — how to talk about his company’s products than Steve Jobs. Why not use this idea within your company?

The very best marketing language you can use — bar none — are the words of your customers.

The very worst language you can use — bar none — are the words of your engineers.

Guess whose words the vast majority of consumer electronics makers use?

Stunningly, inexcusably, most manufacturers allow their engineers to shape their marketing. Most consumer marketing and communications originates with engineers and their strange cousins, the product managers.

Why?!

Because it’s just the way it has always been.

Hear me clearly on this: nothing your engineers say should ever be allowed to leave the walls of your offices. Let them engineer. That’s what they’re trained to do. And today’s consumer electronics engineers are clearly good, because most consumer electronics to make it to the mainstream is excellent.

But today’s high-tech marketing is uniformly pretty terrible.

Because engineers, not consumers, are shaping it.

Ask your consumers how talk, think about, and use your products. Ask them what they love, hate, know and don’t know about your products. Ask them why they bought what they bought, who uses it in the house, and why. What feature do they use most? Why? Ask.

Ask.

Ask.

Beg if you have to.

But before your marketing department goes to work on which features will be heroes, and what language will resonate best — ask your consumers.

They are never wrong.