Challenges

Managing the complexities of a global Windows back-to-school campaign that targets five distinct audience segments for retail partners in The Americas, Europe, Middle East and Africa during a global pandemic. Additionally, the fluid nature of the COVID-19 pandemic factored into production schedules, and the strategic thinking behind the key campaign visuals and messaging were a moving target and changed week-to-week.

Solutions

Our deep knowledge of the retail campaign lifecycle, plus our familiarity with Microsoft’s internal processes allowed us to quickly adapt to these challenges. In our capacity as the agency responsible for the production and build-out of assets based on provided creative, we prioritized the work based on our knowledge of production schedules and empowered our client to ask the right questions internally at Microsoft to facilitate better planning.

We also came up with a streamlined solution for rapid iteration that allowed us to use placeholder creative that could be easily updated. This made the process of integrating the final campaign creative a cinch. It also gave us more time to focus on how to best leverage the provided material based on context and the goals of our client, and less on the actual process of creating the assets themselves.

Ultimately, we were able to successfully deliver all campaign materials—assets for social, banners, email, landing pages and PDPs, as well as in-store assets like endcap and inline backer graphics, table signs and device fact tags with guidance documentation—all on-time and on-budget while our internal team adapted to a fully remote working environment. Huzzah!