• by Aaron Baar , June 10, 2009

In the midst of its big Bing search engine marketing push, Microsoft has quietly launched an Internet video and philanthropic effort to tout the newest iteration of its browser, Internet Explorer 8.

 

Two videos, which went live on high-profile video sites as well as social media spaces on Wednesday, are done in a public service announcement style in which Dean Cain (former Superman of "Lois & Clark") acts as a knowledgeable spokesman about new Internet afflictions such as "F.O.M.S" (Fear of Missing Something) and "S.H.Y.N.E.S.S" (Sharing Heavily Yet Not Enough Sharing Still).

The videos, directed by comedian Bobcat Goldthwait, intentionally look low budget and feature silly elements like a fat man in a shiny tight spandex suit (and a computer monitor for a face) who taunts a woman about possibly missing something on the Internet. Another video shows a woman sending her friends too many pictures of cute kittens.

"It was a creative framework that seemed to make sense," Ben Carlson, a representative of Bradley & Montgomery, the Indianapolis agency that created the campaign, tells Marketing Daily. "Instead of just talking about [new features], we wanted to figure out what problems they're solving. That naturally took us to these fake problems people have and how to solve them."

The agency, which also produced a series of videos in which comedians described the history of the Internet for the browser's launch in March, hit upon the strategy as a way to highlight some of IE8's new elements without getting stale. "The whole goal is to get young audiences to take a fresh look at Internet Explorer 8," Carlson says. "We couldn't just bullet-point the features."

The videos encourage people to "Browse Better," and send them to "BrowserforTheBetter.com." Although the videos are comical, the Web site has a serious element. For each download of IE8 through the site, Microsoft will donate the financial equivalent of eight meals to Feeding America. The two programs are not specifically linked through any marketing efforts. "We didn't try to hard to force a linkage," Carlson says. "They kind of grew together nicely."

The philanthropic effort will be promoted through public relations events (the agency built a cityscape out of cans in New York City on Wednesday for the effort), as well as reaching out through bloggers and social media, Carlson says.

"Our thought was, if we create the story right and allow people to share it with friends and family, it will spread on its own," he says.