Like a lot of Americans born in the late 1980s, Russell Wilson didn't exactly consider himself a Microsoft person.
The Seahawks quarterback was 6 years old when Windows 95, Microsoft's era-defining operating system, was released in 1995.
By the time Wilson was spending his own money on electronics, the Redmond company was increasingly relegated to the office. Wilson took an iPad with him on road games after the Seahawks drafted him in 2012.
So it was something of a shift when Wilson became a Microsoft pitchman.
"I told them I've always been an Apple guy," he said. "You've got to convince me."
Microsoft in 2013 inked a five-year deal to persuade the rest of the National Football League, at a reported cost of $400 million, to integrate some Microsoft brands and eventually get Surfaces in the hands of Wilson and his counterparts on the sidelines.
"It's all part of a very focused marketing campaign to change the perception of Microsoft," Daniel Ives, a financial analyst with FBR Capital Markets, said of the NFL deal. "Microsoft is kind of viewed as that legacy technology vendor. You don't need to have a Microsoft product as a consumer. That's the uphill battle they have."
Microsoft makes the majority of its money selling its trio of cash cows — Windows operating system, Office productivity suite, and server tools — to businesses.
