“In looking for help to reach out to our audience, we found Projectline—an excellent partner for internal marketing.” New Media Manager, Enterprise Partner Group, Microsoft Corporation

Microsoft Academy Mobile Marketing Strategy and Project Management

Situation: Microsoft employs more than 80,000 sales and marketing professionals around the world, and is constantly looking for effective ways to share best practices and facilitate the flow of information amongst these teams.  Academy Mobile, a Microsoft internal social computing initiative, is one such tool aimed at creating a knowledge sharing environment through the use of audio and video podcasts. 

The success of Academy Mobile largely depends on the active participation of every individual in sales and marketing. To achieve this goal, the Academy Mobile team needed help generating brand awareness, quality podcasts, and community engagement.

Solution: The Academy Mobile team sought out the innovative marketers at Projectline Services to drive and manage a variety of efforts aimed at building enthusiastic awareness of and generating ongoing momentum for the Academy Mobile initiative. These included creating and distributing print and e-mail invitations, flyers, posters, banners, and even Academy Mobile cookies; hosting high-energy café events during lunch hours at the Microsoft campuses; and coordinating PodCamp at the annual TechReady conference, as well as organizing information booths and/or speakers at other internal Microsoft events.  

Another highly successful offering was the Podcast-in-a-Box program, which encouraged serious podcasters to share their expertise by providing them with high-end podcasting tools at no cost as long as they produced a minimum of three podcasts per month. The program was a huge hit, and the tools sold out in less than two months. The Academy Mobile team anticipates that 300 podcasts will be generated from this program alone.

Benefits: By focusing their creative, relationship-driven energy into the success of these marketing initiatives and events, Projectline project managers helped the Academy Mobile team increase podcast production from 200 to 2,400+ and draw in around 10,000 unique users. The initiative was so successful that the Academy Mobile team won the Marketing Excellence 2008 Award in Digital Marketing awarded by Steve Balmer himself

Thanks to Projectline’s fully-engaged project management, the Academy Mobile group also hired Projectline’s creative services team to rebrand its logo/concept in preparation for its next campaign. Projectline continues to drive marketing momentum and Technology Adoption Program services for Academy Mobile with the launch of the Podcasting Kit for SharePoint and other ongoing joint PR and marketing efforts.

Results:

• Within one year, Academy Mobile podcasts increased from 200 to 2,400
• Academy Mobile currently has 1,000 podcasters, 10,000 unique users, and more than 90,000 downloads
• The Academy Mobile team won the Marketing Excellence 2008 Award in Digital Marketing for their innovative approach to providing a social media tool for the enterprise