Microsoft has launched a new offline/online campaign to encourage existing Office users to upgrade Office 2003. In the accompanying print ad in PC Magazine, Microsoft urges Office 97 users to "evolve" to Office 2003.
1200+ employee bloggers do more to market Microsoft's products/services these days than anything the corporation has done in years.
Someone please post a link to this blog post on the Redmond Sharepoint server. Here are three ways Microsoft could use our agency's "find, listen, engage and empower" approach to encourage business users to upgrade to Office 2003...
- Find referenceable users and empower them to blog on your site - Use PubSub, Feedster, MSN Search and customer data, etc. and find the most vocal Office 2003 enthusiasts in the blogosphere. Initiate a dialogue with them and, if they're interested, give them blogs where they can regularly chronicle how they use Office 2003 to improve their daily productivity. Let the customers tell your story.
- Have loyal Office 2000 and 2003 users debate each other head-to-head - Find two users of the Office suite - one a loyal 2000 user, another a 2003 fan - and let them them debate each other on the merits of their choice of suite via a shared blog.
- Give out free upgrades - Seed 500 bloggers with free upgrades to Office 2003 and index their posts via an RSS-powered portal. Dinosaurs don't sell Office suites, Microsoft. Think different. Think conversational. I know you can do it. Your Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.
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