100 Surface Stories

BACKGROUND:
Echoes to the US first launch of STUDIO, a seldom seen flagship product of Microsoft in past few years, Hong Kong Microsoft also carries out a batch of promotion for the STUDIO together with SURFACE, the second tier new designs for all level users.



CHALLENGE:

/ Packaging /
SURFACE, a series of laptop & tablet designed to all users, range from professional to kid.
As a secondary product launch, highlighting product features become the mandatory in the project. The challenge to us is … how to put colours on such expected product advertorials?


/ Budget /
Another cliche but grim realities to creative is, again, how to make a Michelin starred fine cusine in a fast food budget.
It is always a resource-allocation challenge to creatives. Microsoft posses a big name, yet it offers pretty tight budget to their advertising, say just half of a normal scale. The rational behind is they would rather spend their money on giveaway & trial.
So throughout the brainstorming, it was always a weight among 1) Cost  2) Quality, how we utilise the pro-long relationships with suppliers in super tight budget 3) Strategy, how we pave the way and maximise the effectiveness of endorsors.



IDEA:
We came up the idea of “Me & My Surface Stories”, inspired by the stunning trial experience SURFACE brought to the team.
Advertising is, you only need to throw a cherry on the top when you found the product has been doing really good.
After the team first got to touch with the new features that all beyond our expectation, dialling the colour wheels, picking the ink drop with one slightly push; simply laid your hand down and writes; running 4 applications in same second on one screen…etc, we believe users would feel what we felt- surprised.
And those trial experiences would be all very unique: a designer would expect something entirely different compare to an office lady, so does a professional or a kid. The expectation is unique, the reactions is unique as well.  
Just so we know, users would illustrates the excitement differently with the versatile features fitting all kind, and what we need to do is to capture the moment they are being surprised!


STRATEGY:

Me And My Surface - 100 surface stories
We believe only a few cool influencers are needed to spark interest of the target groups Microsoft are eyeing.
By taking advantage of influencers’ fame and their stylish image, we would seeps SURFACE to those groups much easier with a volume of 100 creators stories in a way of “Dark Social”. In a result to amplify the advertising effect to the corresponding groups.


 


So strategic-wise, we put majority of the budget in the product first launch, making the noise loud enough to the public to begin with. Thus, the public, in general, get to know what the new products are.

And in the days after, we opt to make the advertisement more targeting. So we decided to carry out batches of SURFACE trial sessions, offer a chance for our targets really experience the surprises brought by our products.




EXECUTIONS:



























 
























100 surface stories | Dark Social

SURFACE trials, offered a chance for our targets really experience the surprises brought by our products.

At the mean time, we filmed them, interviewed them, made them feel like they were the special one in their area. That’s the essence of dark social strategy: When the guests feel good to what they experienced, they share. To a certain extend, they want to make their friends jealous. The other way round, their friends would have desire/ positive feeling to the brand. That’s how dark social works, no hard selling, all in the perspective of insiders, the brand would gains positive social currency via insiders’ own network.

And we facilitate their shares with couple visual materials, experience, personal portrait, video …..
And they are all put in the easy access hub.


Credits:
Creative Lead: Andrew Lee 
Associate Creative Director: Ronald Chong
Senior Art Director: Chris Leung
Art Director: Wai Wai Wai 
Art Director ( Testimonial Video ): Enson Chan 

Project in April 2017