The challenge
Previous launches of Microsoft's Windows operating system have frequently been marred by the almost immediate discovery of glitches and bugs by IT professionals and software developers. For the launch of Windows 7, Microsoft asked us to find a way to avoid this problem, and to generate sales opportunities.
Our insight
IT professionals and software developers tend to be skeptical of manufacturers' marketing communications, preferring instead to rely on the opinions of their peers.
Our solution
We recognized that we had to dispel the perception that Microsoft launches products in isolation of customer feedback. To achieve that goal, we needed to give the IT community an immediate means of airing their views in order to generate real-time user feedback that was relevant, discoverable and authentic.
We took the learning from previous launches and created a genuine first by creating a live open source platform – called Feeds – to pull in real-time, multiple sources of customer conversation and feedback.
We used a combination of paid, owned and earned media to make the IT community aware of the Feeds platform and how they could use it to share content and opinions related to the launch. To further facilitate engagement, we enabled
multi-channel communication including mobile SMS, blogging, Twitter and at-event promotion via big screen, postcards and SMS alert.
The results
- Over 10,000 sales leads in two months
- 500,000 messages posted to Feeds within five months
- All 65 launch events fully booked in four days
