The Microsoft Surface brand was up against three main obstacles: Unaided awareness of Surface was low, the brand didn’t stand for one clear thing in the consumer’s mind, and sales weren’t increasing at the same rate as the rest of the market. They were losing people every step of the way.

In response, Surface planned to introduce an all-new brand mantra, Original by Design. Our job was to define what this mantra meant and how its visual identity would come to life. Our objective was to establish a preference for Surface, create greater cross-channel cohesion, drive new awareness, consideration, and familiarity for Surface products, and build consumer trust in the brand.

This campaign was founded on one ownable cultural truth; inspiration can come from anywhere, originality is where you take it. After all, originality isn't an individual journey designed in a vacuum. It is a shared experience, a community of inspiration that we collectively tap into and harness. Originality, and Surface, truly are a story about “we,” not “me.” Instead of trying to be better than one another, we should try to be better because of one another, creating tools and technology for ideas to evolve and originals to unite.

To help the Surface brand break through and capture mindshare, we knew the Original by Design narrative had two holistic responsibilities: to stand out and generate emotion, and build and sustain trust. We needed an inspiring, unexpected, ownable way into originality that could expand across owned, earned, and paid media, influencers and peers, as well as personal experience. So, our strategy focused on collaborating with a wide array of original protagonists, each with their own cultural cache, to influence who uses Surface devices to fuel their originality, creativity, and innovation.

We kicked things off with an anthem video, campaign website, and content series—in which originals such as deadmau5, Cache Bunny, Brooke Shaden, and Martellus Bennett shared how Surface inspires and empowers them to take their creativity to the next level.

After the launch came Project Inspire: an Instagram-based game of creative telephone, where four talent with different skills inspired each other to produce truly original content.

To extend our reach and fuel originality to new audiences, we partnered with CreativeLive to offer free classes from experts such as Chase Jarvis, Reyna Noriega, Lewis Howes, and many others.

We also worked with dbrand, producing new skins inspired by our Originals that are available for order via the Original by Design website.

Our campaign culminated in a contest where creators around the world showcased their originality to become one of four to win $25,000 and the latest Surface technology.

Our efforts to strengthen Surface’s cultural relevance with product and human-led storytelling delivered on a grand scale. We reached over 26 million video views and 201 million estimated partner organic impressions while the Surface Originals contest hit over 1,300 entries in the first two weeks alone. We also saw a ten percent increase in consideration, a 13 percent increase in purchase intent, and a 14 percent increase in advocacy.