In a bid to increase its presence in the saturated smartphone market, Microsoft launched its new platform Windows Phone 7 with a marketing campaign and integrated consumer launch on November 8, which included a mobile tour with reality TV show host Rob Dyrdek and actress Minka Kelly and free concerts in New York and San Francisco. Centered around print, digital, and TV ads that poke fun at what the tech giant has dubbed "bad mobile phone behavior," the promotion sought to bring customers into stores to try out the new software.
"The campaign is built on a consumer insight that we believe will really resonate with people: As a society, we're spending more time heads down in our phones than interacting with the people we're sitting right in front of," said a Microsoft spokesperson. "Our goal is to start a conversation that puts the different approach that we took with the phone in context. Windows Phone 7 is designed to bring together what you care about most, easier and faster."
With an eye to underscoring the integrated Zune software (Microsoft's answer to Apple's iPod) in Windows Phone 7, as well as other new features, the corporation partnered with Nashville-based sponsorship and fulfillment agency MAC Presents to host two music-focused events the same day the phones using the platform were available in stores. Fans could pick up the free tickets to the performances—Katy Perry in New York and Maroon 5 in San Francisco—in select AT&T stores, driving potential consumers into the retail outlets, where store associates demonstrated the new software. The point was to show off the ease of using the technology, and the user-friendly and efficient apps that would prevent the so-called bad behavior.
To give that idea more weight, a five-city tour dubbed the "Really Rally Road Trip" put Windows Phone 7 to the test, taking Dyrdek and Kelly on the road with the devices so they could use functions like Bing Maps and Twitter to explore cities like Chicago, Las Vegas, and Manhattan, Kansas, as well as point out consumers with bad phone behavior.