MICROSOFT CLOUD COACH

TitleMICROSOFT CLOUD COACH
BrandMICROSOFT CORPORATION (INDIA)
Product / ServiceWINDOWS SERVER 2012
CategoryB04. Business Products & Services
EntrantWUNDERMAN INTERNATIONAL Gurgaon , INDIA
Entrant Company WUNDERMAN INTERNATIONAL Gurgaon, INDIA
Advertising Agency WUNDERMAN INTERNATIONAL Gurgaon, INDIA

Credits

Name Company Position
Ashwani Sinha Wunderman International Sr. Strategic Planner
Anshdeep Kaur Wunderman International Sr. Copy Writer
Mahmood Alam Wunderman International Art Director
Sumbul Khan Wunderman International Sr. Account Director
Ashish Prasad Wunderman International Associate Creative Director
Supreet Mahanti Wunderman International Creative Director
Indrajeet Bose Wunderman International Creative Director
Bhavna Kapur Wunderman International Team Lead

The Brief

Technologies of tomorrow need to climb the mountain of adoptability to become widespread and successful. And adoptability is an offshoot of foresight and familiarity. As a future-facing cloud-based offering, Microsoft’s Windows Server 2012 adds cloud-power to servers, making them more efficient, flexible, accessible and economical. But being a complex and physically cumbersome IT solution, its success depended on ensuring that IT professionals fully understood the nature of this offering. The objective therefore was to make IT professionals efficiently and resolutely experience the capabilities of Windows Server 2012 (KPI: 30,000 product experiences).

Describe how the promotion developed from concept to implementation

An enchanting brand experience would trigger conversations around Windows Server 2012 and ensure active, enthusiastic participation. But that called for showcasing a complex and physically cumbersome enterprise technology to a dissipated audience. So we customized a bus, equipped it with Windows Server 2012, remotely connected it with Microsoft’s servers at Microsoft Technical Centre and created a unique experiential private cloud immersion-on-wheels programme. We called it the Cloud Coach. Once the bus was ready, we set out an audacious road trip to give IT pros across the country a hands-on demo.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

• Achieved KPI of 30,000 product experiences in just the first 3 months – over 36,000 product experiences delivered • Cloud Coach averaged a whopping 20-25 minutes per immersion – over 1000% increment over other tactics! • Over 9,000 enquiries • Reached over 900,000 IT professionals • More than 70,000 footfalls • A 500% fan-base growth on social media from a pre-campaign base of 10,400 to a current base of over 62,000 (150% organic growth) • Hundreds of mentions on the blogosphere and unpaid media • Total interactions through FB and Twitter channels: 1,000,000

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

Owing to the technically complex nature of the offering, traditional category-preferred selling techniques rely heavily on organizing events for IT professionals and product demos at pre-destined, un-negotiable, server-equipped locations. Such events are beset with paltry participation resulting in low RoI. The Cloud Coach efficiently increased the catchment area and ensured that every participant got a one-on-one, hands-on experience of how Windows Server 2012 could help them. The novelty of our approach created a snowball effect encouraging more IT professionals to participate. Average consumer immersions at traditional events last about 2-3 minutes, the Cloud Coach averaged a whopping 20-25 minutes.