Just as people were becoming dangerously obsessed with their phones in the early 20teens, we launched a global campaign for a phone designed to stare at less.
The campaign was one of TED's first Ads Worth Spreading, Time Magazine's Top 10 of the Year, and a Cannes Film Lion shortlist. It also trended on Twitter and whenever news articles reported on this new phone behavior, they embedded our ads and talked about the tension. Many preachers and teachers used the campaign in their sermons and lessons.
You now live in the 2020s and may notice you don’t own a Windows Phone. Turns out no one believed Microsoft could make a good phone, to the point where even Bradley Cooper’s dulcet tones couldn’t convince them. But I love that we leaned in to phone obsession before most people noticed it was a thing. And it definitely opened the door to the anti-iPhone space Samsung now owns.
Bad phone behavior: Donovan called it back in the 60's.
It's hard to believe now, but in 2010 people hadn't noticed that staring at our phones was kind of ruining everything.
Windows Phone was designed to get you in, and out, and back to life. So we challenged people to try out Windows Phone's speed against their own phone's online.
People had fun with the idea, doing their own versions.
Whenever bad phone behavior happened in culture, people would use the campaign to make fun of it.