Microsoft to spend $80m on Office 2010 campaign

Microsoft will launch a global advertising campaign worth $80 million (Dh294m) to promote its latest product range – Office 2010.

The figure, which is not the highest to launch Microsoft products, according to industry observers, was revealed by some media websites that gave no details of regional spend planned by the company.

The campaign will be customer-focused and seems to be an extension of the recent Windows 7 campaign. After an initial soft launch, the global software giant will embark on an international advertising campaign using all the possible platforms – print, electronic and digital.

New York-based advertising agency JWT has conceived the concept of the campaign that revolves around the theme "Make it Great" with every day models showing various aspects of daily life and the use of the application in different ways.

One ad features Nanani P, a student, who uses an Office program called One Note to make reports for school. Another Office 2010 user, Aaress Lawless, the editor of women's tennis magazine OntheBaseline, is shown in a print ad holding a tennis racket, as copy explains how she uses PowerPoint 2010 to add testimonial videos to her presentations.

Microsoft office in Dubai or abroad were not available to provide any more details of the campaign, including the regional spend and breakdown of ad spend in various platforms.

But news carried in international media reveal that in addition to TV and print, the global campaign also includes flash mobs featuring participants sporting Office's distinctive orange hue.

The campaign for Office 2010, which ranges in price from $119 to $499, will also be braving the competition from free products that are available on the web, including Google's and from Microsoft itself. Commenting on the subtle message in Microsoft campaigns, including the new one, Rob Enderle, President and Principal Analyst of Enderle Group, was quoted in Brandweek that Office 2010's biggest competitor is likely to be previous iterations of Office.

"[Microsoft] has the unhappy process of making people dislike the older product and they have to kind of disparage their own," he said.

Enderle added that the Windows 7 campaign had a good response, so: "It's not uncommon to reuse a formula that worked before. Why take the risk?"

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