Microsoft is one of the world’s largest technology companies. In the early 2010s it was pushing Windows Phone as a third mobile platform alongside iOS and Android, and a platform with no apps is a platform with no users.
Company
Microsoft Canada
Role
Art Director
Project Overview
Developers are not a marketing audience. They are a maker audience, and they do not respond to being sold a platform the way a consumer responds to being sold a phone. What they respond to is standing among their peers, and to being backed by someone with reach. So the appeal could not be economic, because the economics of Windows Phone were not yet there. It had to be about identity: who you are if you build on the frontier instead of the crowded street.
Challenge
Windows Phone was caught in the oldest platform trap there is. No users without apps, no apps without users. For a Canadian developer in 2012, building for iOS or Android was the rational choice, and the case for Windows Phone could not be made on reach or revenue. Microsoft Canada needed 200 quality apps from a developer community that had no obvious reason to supply them.
The Developer Movement, framed as a mini-revolution rather than a developer program. It pushed developers to take charge, think big, and build the next app phenomenon. The whole campaign was inspired by old propaganda posters.
At its centre was The Developer Manifesto, seven lines that read like a creed rather than a set of terms: Be an innovator. Aspire to greatness. Explore new frontiers. Do it yourself. Lead the pack. Create your fame. Start something. That framing gave developers something to belong to instead of something to enter.
Underneath it, a real machine. Two tracks, one for Windows Phone and one for Windows Azure, each with its own toolkit and training. A reward ladder that escalated with commitment: publish one quality app and choose a reward, publish two and choose again, publish three and your work goes in front of Microsoft’s judges for publicity. A dashboard where developers tracked each app’s approval status and claimed what they had earned. Awareness ran through targeted email and placement on the Xbox 360 dashboard, with the top five apps showcased across Microsoft and Xbox properties. The whole thing ran under one line: Start Something.
The target was 200 quality apps. The Movement delivered almost 700, from nearly 2,000 developers. The site drew 37,960 visits with an average time on site of 4:35.
This campaign took home GOLD at the CMA Awards
