Microsoft Store

The brief

The promotions existed to drive sign-ups (the camps, the coding sessions) and purchases (Surface, Xbox, holiday, back to school), in store and online. Each kit needed one message that worked as a flyer, a banner, a social post, a certificate, a T-shirt and a table on the store floor.

What we built

The YouthSpark summer camps kit carried one line everywhere: fun and creative exploration for kids at Microsoft Store. The same idea runs through the flyers, the digital banners, the Twitter and Facebook posts, the participation agreement and the certificate of completion a kid takes home.

The YouthSpark coding kit put the argument in the headline, Coding is creative, and stretched it across posters, pop-up banners, name badges, sign-up emails and three T-shirts, Creator, Builder and Dreamer, each word split between the front and the back.

For Surface, a family of product stories on one grammar: Where ideas take shape, make yours real. Where ideas roam free, unleash yours. Where stories evolve, tell yours. Holiday (Gifts they'll love) and back to school (Chase what you love; Where ideas learn to fly) followed the same discipline.

The Xbox One table is the piece I'd keep if I could keep one: the store-floor display with the copy still roughed in by hand, in marker, before it was set in type. The same kits ran online, too: the sign-up emails, the holiday e-blast, the social posts and the store's web promotions carried the in-store lines.

What changed

Promotion sign-ups and purchases beat every previous quarter, and online conversions rose more than 18%.

A line that survives the trip from flyer to badge to T-shirt without breaking is the same thing a founder's message has to do across a deck, a rep and a website.