Microsoft’s advertising campaign for Windows 8 – a revisit

A look at various ways Microsoft followed to publicize Windows 8 operating system.

It has been a few months since Microsoft launched Windows 8 and here we revisit the various methods Microsoft used to publicize Windows 8 over the months.

There are articles stating that Microsoft has had plans to spend almost $1.5 billion which is likely to be triple the amount spent on the Windows Phone 7 campaign. (reported by Forbes).

Advertising campaign

Here is one of the Windows 8 TV ads featuring Lenka titled ‘Everything at once’ :

There are even huge graffiti style paintings related to Surface tablet which runs Windows 8 (or Windows RT) put up close to an Apple Store in Chicago. (see image below). Thus publicizing both the tablet and the OS at once.

These Surface wall paintings have been put up across New York for example the following image by Amanda :

With such advertisements put all over it has been thought that it is difficult to miss out a Windows 8 device for the Christmas season in 2012. Unfortunately things were not the same as thought so.

Tie Ups with brands

Microsoft did have tie-ups with brands and movies for Windows 8 (not getting into relationship with manufacturers like Nokia).

For example, there has been a tie up with the Bollywood (Indian Hindi film industry) movie Talaash starring Aamir Khan. (image credit)

In store publicizing

Now this part is really amazing. Take a look at the following 2 minute video by Microsoft Portugal where a kid explains using Windows 8 to customers in a store in Lisbon. It is evident that the customers are amazed at this experience increasing the possibility of a visitor to convert to a customer.

In India, there is a virtual lady demonstrating Windows 8 at a store. This is definitely an attention grabber and surely makes people think of Windows 8 (of course after the lady).

These are some of the many tactics Microsoft used (has been using) to make the new operating system popular. But the results dont seem to be too promising.

Anyway the scope of the article is to collate the various techniques only and not about the results. Do comment if you have more interesting videos or articles related to the Windows 8 campaign and let us update the article.

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