Microsoft
Microsoft
After partnering with us to promote Windows Phone* with a series of DJ events centered around a bespoke, socially-gamified, app-based ringtone remix experience, Microsoft engaged CROWN to increase the visibility of Microsoft’s design-led initiatives and their design community as well as raise the profile & reputation of design leaders from across the company.
Challenge: Make Microsoft Cool Again.
After a long-standing, mostly binary feud with Apple, unquestionably the leading OS among the influential design community, Microsoft’s company culture had begun an important shift toward a friendlier, more open-source personality. Designers have always been influencers at the cultural vangard, and winning them over was deemed an important step in continuing to challenge the way Microsoft was perceived in the market.
As Microsoft Design’s agency of record for three years, we pioneered a deep focus on the emerging practice of Inclusive Design – at the forefront of what is now a global movement to make product design and UX/UI accessible for the broadest audiences possible (by focusing on people who have the most difficulty using the existing framework – and proved this focus daily by curating an editorial-style social media content calendar aimed at amplifying and adding value to design’s most important and impactful stories in real time.
We proudly partnered with the The Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design at the Royal College of Art, the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), MIG, Inc. Urban Play, and other highly esteemed design orgs and luminaries, we were responsible for ghostwriting visual and verbal communications for design leaders across the Microsoft org, and we supported our amazing clients and facilitated speaking engagements at SXSW (on a panel with leaders from Pantone), Montreal Film Festival (in partnership with 20th Century Studios & Matt Damon), Seattle Interactive Conference (alongside IDEO & Frog Design), and curated “design swarms,” workshops, and contests leading to massive, global social media engagement.
Other notable achievements include strategizing, spearheading, & growing one of the first design-focused Medium publications, building out one of the first “design influencer” programs, and launching the Fluent Design System. Our efforts received notice in Fast Company, Wired, The Verge, Design Week & more.
Client: Microsoft
Agency: CROWN
After a long-standing, mostly binary feud with Apple, unquestionably the leading OS among the influential design community, Microsoft’s company culture had begun an important shift toward a friendlier, more open-source personality. Designers have always been influencers at the cultural vangard, and winning them over was deemed an important step in continuing to challenge the way Microsoft was perceived in the market.
CROWN was tasked with communicating company-wide support for designers & design thinking, displaying strong leadership in the discipline, and finding authentic, organic, non-promotional ways to evidence this investment to the global design community and beyond.
As Microsoft Design’s agency of record for three years, we pioneered a deep focus on the emerging practice of Inclusive Design – at the forefront of what is now a global movement to make product design and UX/UI accessible for the broadest audiences possible (by focusing on people who have the most difficulty using the existing framework – and proved this focus daily by curating an editorial-style social media content calendar aimed at amplifying and adding value to design’s most important and impactful stories in real time.
We proudly partnered with the The Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design at the Royal College of Art, the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), MIG, Inc. Urban Play, and other highly esteemed design orgs and luminaries, we were responsible for ghostwriting visual and verbal communications for design leaders across the Microsoft org, and we supported our amazing clients and facilitated speaking engagements at SXSW (on a panel with leaders from Pantone), Montreal Film Festival (in partnership with 20th Century Studios & Matt Damon), Seattle Interactive Conference (alongside IDEO & Frog Design), and curated “design swarms,” workshops, and contests leading to massive, global social media engagement.
Other notable achievements include strategizing, spearheading, & growing one of the first design-focused Medium publications, building out one of the first “design influencer” programs, and launching the Fluent Design System. Our efforts received notice in Fast Company, Wired, The Verge, Design Week & more.
Client: Microsoft
Agency: CROWN
We utilized Sprinklr, Crowdbooster #RIP (shout out to Ricky Yean), & Sprout Social to manage outbound & inbound communications during the engagement, as well as analytics and optimizations.
Reporting was undertaken monthly and involved analysis of competitors like Google Design, @Design #RIP (really, X?), design.facebook, etc., influencer/superfan identification and cataloguing in our purpose-built custom CRM, surfacing valuable product- and design-related feedback from the community, and analysis of performance by post, creative/form factor, and content pillar, as well as manual and automated sentiment analysis and SOV.
Reporting was undertaken monthly and involved analysis of competitors like Google Design, @Design #RIP (really, X?), design.facebook, etc., influencer/superfan identification and cataloguing in our purpose-built custom CRM, surfacing valuable product- and design-related feedback from the community, and analysis of performance by post, creative/form factor, and content pillar, as well as manual and automated sentiment analysis and SOV.
One of the unique aspects of this work was coming up with the launch strategy, which involved starting the account from scratch while also paying homage to Microsoft’s longstanding history of design leadership. All channels originated at zero with the exception of 92,000 followers we co-opted from a previous Microsoft product channel that CROWN had helped build and that had subsequently been sunset/decommissioned.
*Speaking of Windows Phone, here’s a fun graphic we put together to catalog the event we were part of during our very first Microsoft engagement (thanks to TPN and Momentum Worldwide!):
*Speaking of Windows Phone, here’s a fun graphic we put together to catalog the event we were part of during our very first Microsoft engagement (thanks to TPN and Momentum Worldwide!):
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