Enjoy the show
This was a campaign pitch for Microsoft Office. The campaign was focused on increasing usage by encouraging users to bring Office into their homes.
Busy doesn’t begin to describe life at home these days. It’s way beyond juggling: it’s a full-scale circus—three rings, ponies, chimps on bikes and more. So how do you make sure you’re the ringmaster, and not the one who’s shot out of the cannon? With a little professional help from Microsoft Office.
Enjoy the show, lose the drama.
Cirque de Your House
:60 Streaming
SFX: LIGHT CIRCUS MUSIC UP AND UNDER
Open on a large kitchen in the midst of morning rush. Mom and Dad are engaged in an elaborate juggling routine involving cereal boxes, bowls, oranges, eggs, and spoons. A teenage boy slides acrobatically down the banister into a handstand on a skateboard, and proceeds to circle the kitchen at high speed. One daughter does back handsprings from the table to the fridge and back. Another eats a flaming piece of toast while talking on a cell phone. And in the background, the family poodle balances on its hind legs on a large red ball.
Dad:
Nice catch…
Mom:
Thanks…you too.
ANNCR (VO):
Morning mayhem? Keep it under control with a little help from Microsoft Office.
Circus Wagon
:30 Streaming
SFX: CIRCUS MUSIC UP AND UNDER
A mini-van pulls up to the curb by a soccer field. The curbside door slides open. Three girls tumble out into a pile on the grass. Multiple soccer balls come bouncing out. Two more girls roll out, followed quickly by a Golden Retriever, some orange sideline cones, and several soccer bags. After a short pause, just when it feels the van exodus has ceased, one final player vaults out into a summersault and lands in a triumphant pose by the pile of stuff and girls. Mom, in the meantime, has exited the driver’s door and walked around the front of the van.
MOM:
Nice dismount.
Posing girl:
Thanks…
Anncr (VO):
Find some calm in all the chaos, with a little help from Microsoft Office.
Microsoft’s Office is its own greatest competitor. It has become so fully featured that any improvements were incremental at best. And it is the de facto standard for pretty much everything. Microsoft asked us to expand the audience by targeting people who were using it at work and encourage them to use it at home with their family as well.
The insight that led to this campaign is that family life is crazy, chaotic and joyful all at the same time. Just like the circus. The campaign idea was to have circus performers in plain clothes performing and coordinating their activities with Office.
