Every day, millions of people use Windows across the world. They know it. They love it. Windows 8 would change their experience both technically and personally. It’s touch first, fueled by apps, running on next generation hardware. For Microsoft, this provided a real opportunity to reinvent itself and reclaim its reputation as a leader of innovation in the tablet, touch screen era.

Our strategy was twofold:

SEEING IS BELIEVING:

The OS can transform things people know so well into something so different. We wanted to immerse them into a Windows 8 world so they could see all its possibilities.

A WORLD OF APPS:

People had to know their favorite apps and content were available on Windows 8 right out of the box. We needed to consult with top media partners across TV, print and digital to show how their content was truly a better experience through Windows 8.

A WHOLE NEW START SCREEN

On launch night, we interweaved the OS across every primetime TV network and program, completely reimagining favorite shows and characters through Windows 8. The largest experiential event in history at New York’s "Tiles Square" (Times Square) let people interact with new Windows 8 devices and share to 39 big screens above. In print, 13 of Conde Nast’s editors revealed their lives in a Windows 8 world by putting their very own start screens on their magazine covers - a global first. Digital and social media expanded the Windows 8 world across the web, including a Facebook app that mined users’ interests to create a custom cover photo replicating the Start Screen as if hand crafted by you. Nearly 280 pieces of customized creative and copy and one hour of video showed how Windows 8 reimagines 53 media brands’ content through native apps.

It was an OOH event of incredible magnitude and became the largest live event in Times Square history, according to the City of New York. Over 2m people attended “Tiles Square” live in New York, where we were the first to bring a synched screen experience like this into market for the largest and most complex interactive OOH event.

The scale of the event extended nationally across the U.S. through digital and social media with over 20,000 online conversations and even 30% of search queries related to the event were from outside of New York.