Extensive Windows Phone activation helps shoppers configure

Microsoft has launched the UK’s biggest ever interactive digital OOH campaign (DOOH), allowing consumers to configure their personal Windows Phone Start screens through interactive touch screens. The personalised screens will then form the creative for Microsoft’s national broadcast campaign – spanning almost 450 screens across the country and representing a true media first.

24 interactive screens, placed in shopping malls and cinemas across the UK, will include participants’ photos and first names, completely personalising the consumer experience and the overall campaign. The wider campaign will deliver DOOH advertising nationally into: malls, London Underground, cinemas, rail stations including D6s and Transvision, as well as landmark digital sites such as Birmingham New Street, Manchester Hacienda and Westfield Shepherds Bush, with the latest creative submissions from consumers rolling out across the network every 30 mins for two weeks.

An image of the ads in situ will be also placed on the Windows Phone UK Facebook page and participants encouraged to tag and share their OOH ad socially.

Rory Behrman, business director at UM London, the media agency that planned the campaign, says, “To pull off a media and technological feat of this scale required a huge amount of collaboration from all the parties involved. We’re delighted at the result – a true embodiment of the individuality that the Windows Phone experience delivers.”

The technology underpinning the DOOH campaign is by Grand Visual. Neil Morris, founder at Grand Visual, says, “This is digital out of home at its most innovative. The activity combines interactivity, personalisation, fun and fame across a huge national campaign whilst being geo-targeted, dynamic and generating user-centric content for social media. It’s a massively complex project but demonstrates truly ambitious use of the medium”.

Diane Perlman, marketing communications Lead, Windows Phone UK, says, “This idea had the wow factor right from the start and I’m thrilled to see it coming to life in cinemas and shopping centres across the UK. With this innovation, we are enabling consumers to get involved in our campaign, become ‘famous’ and see first-hand how Windows Phone is unique to each one of us. The result is slick, easy to use and fun to interact with, just like Windows Phone. ”