• by Karl Greenberg , April 3, 2007

Microsoft is following the launch of its Vista operating system with a global campaign, breaking this week, for the newest version of its Office suite of programs. The effort, unusually weighted toward digital media, drives consumers to a Web site where they can demo the product in different configurations.

Gatefold ads, which launched in major newspapers yesterday, each show a business man or woman heading to work down familiar streets with iconic sights in the backgrounds, such as the Eiffel Tower or New York's Manhattan Bridge. Text reads: "No matter where you are. No matter what you do. Today your office will be very, very different. Tag: It's a new day. It's a new office."

The campaign, via Microsoft's global ad agency, San Francisco-based McCann Worldgroup, is 61% digital, with a mix of Internet ads, online videos, a Web site--office2007.com--digital interactive billboards, such as one in New York's JFK airport, as well as traditional print and outdoor.

The effort runs through mid-fiscal year 2008 in the Americas, Japan, Europe, Australia and India.

Rob Bagot, executive creative director of McCann, says the campaign is largely about avoiding a frontal assault, and instead enticing people to try this year's Office for themselves.

"The brief came in as experiential campaign, and the approach that seemed to work best, in terms of driving awareness, was out-of-home and print. But everything drives consumers to experience the product," he says.

"We have done a great job of screaming [about Office] in the past, and we wanted a different tone of voice than we have typically used. In doing so, we will create a greater sense that this really is different, especially if we leave some of the communication untold," he says, explaining that print ads are deliberately spare of copy about the product.

He says print ads will run in a range of business publications, with out-of-home targeted at information workers on their way to the office. "[Consumers] are most receptive to new messages in the morning," he says, "so media is in the subway and on buses, and where people drive to work."

The Web site includes 21 demos intended to demonstrate how Office's key products--Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook--are streamlined, better integrated, eliminate redundancy and meaningless busy-work, and are easier to use. The site also includes five Web films, each one to two minutes, which "speak to customers' 'pain points'," he says, with contextual links to drive them to Office demos that show how Office solves the problem.

Account director Jenna Naughton said videos are humorous and meant to be seen as a series.

Banner ads, which launched across a broad range of portals and Web sites, have interactivity without automatically directing users to a Microsoft site. Some banners, for instance, let Web users test things like the redesigned ribbon function in Word, embedded in the ads. Bagot adds that one execution of the banner, which will be on MSN.com, allows consumers to use the sample ribbon to change the type and graphics on the MSN home page, although the changes are visible only to testers.

The online media buy, says Naughton, is "a rich mix; there will be a presence on business sites, but it's effective to reach [prospects] in other mindsets as well, when they are more at leisure." So, for instance, Microsoft will advertise on iFilm.

Microsoft is also running a value-exchange program, wherein consumers who test the new Office at the Web site get free Wi-Fi access at certain hotels.