Creative Direction
Creative Direction
Before Bing.com was a thing, there was Microsoft Windows Live Search. Microsoft was looking for ways to drive interest in their search engine as an alternative to Google. They were also looking to explore different media as trials for other programs. So we introduced Ms. Dewey.
We created a video-based search engine built around the character of Ms. Dewey. With nearly 500 responses, she would comment on every search with a short video clip to the left of the results. Ms. Dewey was smart, sexy and sarcastic. On the back end, queries were matched against a massive list of terms which would lead to the appropriate video response. So search for “cloning” and she would call in her clone. Search for Lindsay Lohan or another starlet and she would talk about their “15 minutes being almost up.
Initially, Ms. Dewey was intended to run for no more than 60 days. There were nearly 900,000 visitors in the first 90 days and it ended up staying live for almost 2 years. Ray Ozzie, former CEO of Microsoft, was interviewed about it and it was a finalist at Cannes. I came up with the initial idea and it is one of the projects I am most proud of.