PERSONALIZED CREATIVE
MICROSOFT WINDOWS
concept
I wanted to find a new way we could engage the Windows user community in a thoughtful, original, clever way by giving back the same excitement they give us. My team developed three distinct styles of custom artwork tailored to fans' interests.
results
The Personalized Creative program quickly became our top engaged content, earning 3x the engagement of our typical replies with over 30k engagements and more than 600k impressions in its first quarter.
Now in its first full year, Personalized Creative continues to be a top performer in the Microsoft social community. The success of this program led to launching an additional design program for Microsoft Surface.
strategy
The focus of my strategy is to seek out niche communities that use or relate to Windows, and led the creative conception of three different design options based on conversation: custom portrait, "throwback," and accessible ASCII emoticons. I worked closely with designers in the development and style of these concepts, and with analysts to "listen" for and identify potential moments for a great conversation with our users.
DESIGN STYLES
throwback
Who doesn't love a bit of nostalgia?
We "listen" for users sharing fond memories of software versions. Throwback designs are custom images made with elements of older versions of Windows software, like Windows 7, Windows Vista, or Windows 98.
portrait
Portrait designs are custom avatars of the user tailored to include their special interests. This user is a streamer, so we dressed him in a costume resembling one from a video game he had been streaming and talking about on his channel and Twitter profile.
ASCII
American Standard Code for Information Interchange, or ASCII characters, aren't screen-reader accessible or low-visibility-friendly. We made them into custom images so we can add alternative text descriptions for everyone to enjoy.