"Carol" was created to make searching web with Live Search more enjoyable and casual experience, as well as opening up possibilities of casual and fun communications among blog users.
CLIENT: Microsoft Corporation
PRODUCT: Windows Live (Live Search)
THE CAMPAIGN HAS ENDED AS OF JANUARY 31st, 2008.
ID AND PASSWORD FOR JUDGING CAROL: awards2008 / creative_view
ID AND PASSWORD FOR JUDGING CAROL: awards2008 / creative_view
A campaign site to promote Windows Live and its search service Live Search, featuring a imaginary birds "Carol" living in the field of internet - that learn/sing words of human through search.
- OBJECTIVE:
1. As branding contents, to exemplify the mind of Windows Live by galvanizing communications and encounters among blog users.
2. To promote Live Search utilization (raise search query count on Live Search and its API).
- MAIN COMPONENTS:
1. A blog widget featuring a carol bird to be placed on each blog entry by users.
2. A central site (= Carol Yard) to deliver the widgets that also functions as a portal for Carol bloggers.
Each carol bird is a representation of a user's blog entry. She not only sings the search word, but also bring related carol birds(i.e. links for entries) along with results of Live Search, by the device of original musical-note notation given by blog users.
The central site works as a search portal for blogs with Carol - upon a search, carol birds of relevant blogs fly in and chorus the search word together.
"Sing Search" - When Live Search is made, carol sings the search word and brings other carol birds into the blog entry.
With the device of "Music Note Notation" given by users, carol birds(i.e. links for entries) of similar interests are brought into one's blog entry.
"Carol Emoticon" - carol birds sing the word in the blog entry in different manners, by giving another music note notation on a blog entry.
On the top page of one's blog, carol birds from each entry get together and chorus the blog title.
And the huge owl "Mimy" projects her "bizarre dream".
And if one is lucky to find secret search words, a "mysterious bird" comes in and navigates a user to another world created by a guest creator. Please type the word "birdcage" in the search box and hit the search button on a Carol blog widget.
This is what you will see;
"Carol Special Contents TORIKAGO(Birdcage)".
"Pecking Holy Egg together" - Occasionally, a carol bird robs user's mouse cursor, and fly back to Carol Yard to peck and crack the "holy egg".
On Carol Yard, a bunch of carol birds brought by Live Search chorus togegher. Clicking each bird takes you to the blog entry where the bird has come from.
As a medium, Carol has been drawn upon not only Windows Live promotion, but also for other Microsoft products/services such as Vista and MSN. The Live Gadget version of Carol also has also been rolled out as a RSS reader to expand the world of Carol.
Upon its release, the word "Carol" got No1. on spotlight keyword on Technorati Japan, and stay in the list for about a week. (As of 1st week of February 2007).
Blog templates featuring Carol were released from a number of blog service providers for promoting Carol, and gained popularlity among blog users.
In the christmas season, as the closing date of the campaign was appoaching, we conducted a farewell present campaign for Carol, utilizing its search gimmick in the blog widget. When a user conduct search typing secret words (namely "Christmas Carol" and "Alice in Wonderland" in Japanese) in, a carol bird wearing a ribbon shows up to take the user to farewell present contents "Carol Winter Night Live".
In the farewell "Carol Winter Night Live" show, all the characters in the world of Carol get together and chorus their Christmas Carol. After the end of their final stage, a farewell present form shows up.
Results:
Over the one year campaign period, the Carol blog widget was issued for 25000 blogs and about 80000 carol birds (unique to each blog entry) were spawned from their blog enries in total, resulting in generating about 11.3 million actual views(3.2 million uniques) on their blogs and at least more than 0.7 million search queries to Live Search (Counted API queries only).
It had also brought a lot of traffic to Live Search(live.jp) directly, and also to relevant MSN pages promoted on Carol.
Carol Central Site(live-carol.jp) was reffered from more than 8000 blog entries according to technorati (Promotion related hyperlinks included).
References:
Here we hope you get a feel of how actual blog users reacted to Carol on technorati or other blog portals.