[OrwellianChild]

Impressive for a number of reasons, many of which relate to the presentation/promotion of a Microsoft product:

  - Not a single Microsoft reference in the entire landing
    page
  - Broad use of Apple iPhone and iPad devices alongside
    normal PCs with no special acknowledgement
  - Product focus on readability/usability across many
    platforms, OS/device-independent
  - Broad integration of sharing hooks across Google, Twitter,
    FB, etc.

This represents a pretty dramatic departure from the siloed approach MS usually takes. It's pretty refreshing!

[oliv__]

Try to imagine the same ad from Apple. With Surface Pro 3 and Nokia Lumia.

Not

[ghshephard]

Which makes sense - Microsoft wants to sell applications and services - regardless of the device you own. Apple wants to sell devices, regardless of the application you use.

Ironically, Microsoft/Apple have developed into potentially very strong partners. If Microsoft starts to move away from being a hardware company, they will be a great fit.

[discardorama]

Why? Apple is the leader; why should they bow down to the level of inferior competitors? Microsoft didn't refer to iphones and ipads out of the goodness of their hearts; but because these devices are the devices of choice for the creative crowd.

[teekert]

Uhm for example because office/onenote on android/iphone works great and are completely cross-platform (with Linux you are confined to the browser but oh well)?

[cwyers]

You can add to that list that the product video on the page is hosted on YouTube, not a Microsoft streaming video service.

[pbhjpbhj]

They even feature firefox on their intro page ... https://sway.com/red_panda ;0)

[johansch]

Everyone likes an underdog. (Perhaps also ultra-rich underdogs.)

[JoblessWonder]

Not sure if you will ever see this... but Sway added a large dropdown for other Office Online apps. So much for being subtle.

[theboywho]

Most companies nowadays have some kind of Machine Learning in place, it shouldn't be a surprise if Microsoft uses some of that knowledge to craft their ads. It's not necessarly that they "got it", but maybe just doing what the data says they should do.

[incongruity]

You might be amazed how often senior executives ignore the data in favor of misconstrued notions of brand protection/image or fears about embracing things "not invented here".

Moreover, this product (more the video for it) represents a departure from previous approaches on Microsoft's part. So, for that reason, it's interesting, IMHO.

That having been said, I'm still not clear about exactly what the primary problem it is trying to solve. I get all sorts of little problems but there's no clear revolutionary "aha" in it.

[OrwellianChild]

I don't think there is a one-size-fits-all approach to promoting software that companies converge on. If "the data" is telling them to do this, Microsoft has managed to ignore "the data" for decades of marketing execution across many products and sectors. I'm just glad to see an example of their marketing strategy not shooting their products in the foot.