Microsoft

New Bing TV Ad Just in Time for Xmas and Santa’s Grotto!

Computer Weekly – Been Nominated for a Blog Award

Although I’m not strictly IT I ‘spose being into digital marketing and some of the stuff I write about Microsoft counts!

Nice to be in the same company as Steve Clayton!

Shortlist announced on 27th October!

Fingers crossed!

Lost Your Phone? Find it with Microsoft My Phone – Review

When the Windows Phone launched a couple of weeks ago, so did a new service from Microsoft called My Phone.

I’d been using it for a while in Beta but the update has really got my attention because of some very cool features.

How about if you’ve misplaced your phone at home or left it on a train? Bloody annoying isn’t it!

The way My Phone works is to synch all your photos, docs, texts etc etc with the cloud under your Windows Live ID AND your phone’s last known location:

My Phone

Here’s what the website looks like now I’m signed in. On the left is a self-explanatory menus of all your phones bits and pieces that have been backed up.

You can see my phone was last backed up last night – you can set it to synch automatically.

My Phone

Click to find your lost phone and you’re presented with a “See map” option:

My Phone

Up pops a Bing map with where my phone was when I synched last!

You’ll also notice some premium features being trialled to:

My Phone

You can have the system ring your phone and it’ll work even if the phone is set to silent so no worries there!

Locking the phone is easy but obviously be careful with Erasing – last resort for that one.

To sign up go to: http://myphone.microsoft.com

A Change of Focus….

I’ve been doing search for 9 years. Except for 10 months in 2001 when I was a display advertising traffic manager for BTLooksmart, search engine marketing has been what I do.

From “Submit-a-Site” and BidSmart to managing blue chips at 24/7 and being part of the team that launched Microsoft adCenter in the UK, the keyword has been “search” and I’ve loved every minute of it.

But more recently I’ve been focused on the social media aspect of what our Microsoft Advertising Community team does. We were originally set up in 2006 to help and support advertisers as they signed up to adCenter. We were also on the frontline at events for answering questions about the platform and dealing with all the suggestions on how we might improve.

As the months have gone on, the way we’ve done business – via blogs and forums – has become more and more important. Social Media Marketing is now almost a given where 3 years ago it was seen as a luxury or nice-to-have.

Last October, when our team moved under Mark Young in Global Trade Marketing, he asked why were only doing this kind of work for adCenter? Why not work towards helping our other audiences in research, mobile and display have a direct feedback mechanism to the product & marketing teams that build the tools they use every day?

So in June we launched the Microsoft Advertising Community site! It’s a vibrant hub of social activity in the forums but also on the different blogs and this is where my “role tweak” comes in!

My area of focus is now the Microsoft Advertising Blog – this is where we’ve already on-boarded Young-bean Song and the Institute guys, we’re also talking about in-game advertising, mobile advertising and display.

This will grow, as will our social media foray. We now have @MSAdvertising @adCenterBlog and @adCenterRep and our Facebook Page cranking out tips, tricks and announcements and I’ll be looking to build our following globally to help continue our support of an industry we’re so passionate about.

So it’s not huge news, it’s not a new job, it’s just a change of direction for me from search and PPC to other forms of digital that need the same love, the same explanation/education, the same feedback and evangelism channels that we’ve been giving to adCenter for the past 3 years.

We’re also going great guns on events too – Cannes Lions and Advertising Week were very exciting and successful for our team with tens of thousands of interactions with our Tweets, posts, photos and videos, so it’s not like I’m chained to my desk either!

And it’s also not like I’m not keeping my hand in with search either. With all advertising becoming digital in the next 5 to 10 years, having an understanding of all marketing in the mix is crucial for anyone’s success in this space so Bing it on!!!

Any feedback, and ideas then shoot them through. I’m always listening!

Yusuf Mehdi at IAB MIXX Video at Advertising Week 2009

Well we’re having a blast over here in New York, working hard – 18 hour days – and playing hard for the rest of the time!

Feel very privileged to have been in the front row at Yusuf’s speech which I wrote about on Monday and there’s been a tremendous reception for my post on Ashton Kutcher’s keynote conversation yesterday.

Today we’re announcing LookingGlass and doing a ton more Tweeting and Blogging.

But check out the demo Yusuf does in this video. If you don’t have 40 minutes for the whole thing then just fast forward to the Bing demo at about 10.30 and that jaw dropping virtual reality stuff at 21 minutes!

AdWeek New York 2009 in Videos Photos & Twitter

Really pleased with this combined effort from our design/marketing/community teams at Microsoft Advertising.

We’ve just launched this Advertising Week 2009 social media hub which includes a Twitter feed of everything being talked about in relation to the event and videos of interviews we’ve done before and we’ll be doing during our time there.

There’s a photo stream and including a very cool DeepZoom plug-in on the home page!

I’ll be in New York for the week blogging and Tweeting, so hope to catch up with a lot of you there!

If you can’t make it I hope you’ll drop by this site now and again…

Britain Works – Microsoft Digital Skills Initiative

Did you know that 77% of jobs in the UK require some sort of IT skills? To us digital marketers, sparking up a laptop or downloading the latest version of Tweetdeck seems like second nature, but to a lot of people just sending an email must seem like a hefty mountain to climb (ask my new mother-in-law!)

This morning on BBC Breakfast our UK MD – Gordon Frazer – talked about Microsoft’s new Britain Works initiative.

A company as big as Microsoft would not be doing its duty during a recession if it just battened down the hatches and fended for itself. All the research says that skills and investment in business developed during lean times pay dividends in the end, so MS have kicked off a 5 part plan:

1. Partnerships with NGOs – Microsoft will build on existing relationships and create new partnerships with employment focussed NGOs to support their work in getting hard-to-reach people back to work. Support for NGOs will be in the form of cash, software and volunteering time.

2. Apprenticeships – The Partner Apprenticeship programme will be rolled out from the pilot area in the West Midlands to a national offer. The apprentices are trained by a Microsoft IT Academy and after 7 months are working full time for the partner.

3. Technology start-ups – Through the BizSpark programme we are supporting the creating of thousands of software development jobs in new technology startups.

4. Training Vouchers – We will be providing 450,000 training vouchers to enable selected client groups access to IT training.

5. Britain Works Skills Portal- www.microsoft.com/uk/britainworks – The Britain Works website will provide people with full information on all the training and work opportunities available through the programme.