Internet Explorer: THE SNITCH

Credits & Description:

Category: Best Use of Digital PR

Advertiser: MICROSOFT

Product/Service: INTERNET EXPLORER 8

Creative Director: Joakim Karlsson (JMW Kommunikation)

Account Director: Björn Mellstrand (JMW Kommunikation)

Project Manager: Tove Widemar (JMW Kommunikation)

Art Director: Anders Stén (JMW Kommunikation)

PR: Samuel Garlöv (JMW Kommunikation)

Media placement: The Snitch Application - Online - 28 Juni 2010

Media placement: Pressrelease On Surfhabits And Personal Integrity - Dagens Media, Resumè, Feber - 29 June 2010

Media placement: Tweet LaunchingThe Snitch From Microsoft Sweden - Twitter - 29 June 2010



Summary of the Campaign

Challenge:

Internet Explorer 8 was losing markets shares on the Swedish market. A negative trend they wanted to turn around.



Execution:

Instead of talking about speed, we choose something that mattered to people: online privacy. We highlighted InPrivate Browsing, a feature that prevents your browsing history from being retained.

To demonstrate this we created The Snitch - an application that analysed your browsing history and presented it like evil gossip about you in social media.



Results:

153 586 unique page visits. And a clear change of trend in market share.



The Situation

In spring 2010, Internet Explorer was rapidly dropping market shares to other browsers.

Microsoft wanted to boost preference of Internet Explorer 8.



The Goal

Our research found that the everyday person doesn’t really care about what browser they use. You just choose one and stick to it. We needed to find a reason more important than browsing speed or fancy graphics for people to change browser. Something that people really cared about. An issue and product feature worthy of sharing with your friends to increase awareness.



The Strategy

At the time there was a raging debate in Sweden about authorities getting a mandate to monitor people’s online activities, making the personal integrity a public issue.

In other words, privacy on the Internet was a burning topic.

We decided to highlight a specific product feature within Internet Explorer 8 called InPrivate browsing. This feature prevents your browsing history from being retained, letting you surf the Internet without leaving any revealing traces.



Execution

So we developed The Snitch, an easy to use web application that analysed your browsing history. And presented it like gossip… about you.

For instance, if you frequently had visited, Facebook, Craigslist, TripAdvisor and Wired you were portrayed as a nosy, cheap and a daydreaming geek. The results could then be shared via Facebook, Twitter and Messenger, giving the campaign its’ viral effect. Along with the application we released a survey on Swedish surf habits and thoughts on personal integrity online.



Documented Results

153,586 unique page visits. And a clear change of trend in market share.