Campaign: Anywhere Working mobile office
Client: Microsoft
PR team: 33 Digital
Timing: August 2012
Budget: £2,000 (costs)

Background and Objectives

We had worked with Microsoft since 2011 when they asked us to help them create a customer community which was not product related.

Anywhere Working is a group initiative to show how time, money and the environment can be saved through remote working. The initiative is led by a consortium of partners including: Microsoft, Business in the Community, Regus, Vodafone, Nuffield Health, Nokia, TfL, Intel, Unwork.com and is supported by the WWF, Department for Transport, TUC, Working Mums and Mumsnet.

Microsoft's 2011 brief was to engage an audience of 30,000 individuals through the Anywhere Working campaign. To date, the campaign has reached more than 250,000 people. Building on this, and to show London commuters that it's possible to work on the go, our senior programme executive, Emily Medd, came up with the idea of the Anywhere Working mobile office. Our plan was to pick up hard working Londoners and show them it is possible to hit deadlines while outside their normal office... like a boss.

Strategy

We pimped out a rickshaw to look like an office cubicle, complete with Anywhere Working branding. Our pedal-powered office also came supplied with a WiFi hotspot, device charger, a tablet with Windows 8 installed, and lots of good coffee

Our programme manager, Neil Young, and senior programme executive, David Clare, spent the day navigating the rickshaw around central London, picking up and interviewing VIPs and startled passersby, while associate programme executive Janey Spratt and account director Samantha Phillips managed the control centre back in the office. Assisted by ace camera operator and editor Tom Wootton, Neil and David also used a GoPro Hero 2 video camera to record the day's highlights for a highly shareable Youtube video, with David taking the role of presenter.

See the team in action here.

Results

Careering around the streets of London with influencers as passengers was an amazing way to cement relationships and generate immediate online buzz. Our feed was packed with fun live updates and the campaign saw 1000+ mentions with a reach of 600,000+ users on the day.

Three influencers joined us for a ride in the mobile office:

• Lea Woodward (@leawoodward) and family, blogger at Location Independent with 14,654 followers. A very well known influencer within flexible working, Lea's family live and work on the road running a business with international clients.
• James Holloway (@jamesholloway), editor of Gizmag, which has 20,428 followers.
• Max Tatton Brown (@MaxTB), contributor to Wired and tech blogger, with 3,197 followers.

The mobile office picked up nine members of the public and also secured a number of mentions from influencers on Twitter:

• Neville Hobson (@Jangles), a well respected tech blogger with 10,702 followers, retweeted Anywhere Working.
• Natalie Sisson (@Suitcasepreneur), a social media entrepreneur with 11,084 followers, tweeted "@Anywhere_Work That’s so frickin cool. So they cycle around while you’re working? That's the true definition of going mobile".
• Sheli Rodney (@shelirodney), technology lover and comms professional with 914 followers, tweeted "If you've seen the mobile office, check out @Anywhere_Work's colourful future world of work infographic".
• Katey Shaw (@kateyshaw), digitalpreneur with 1,241 followers retweeted Anywhere Working.

The Anywhere Working mobile office really worked to capture our audience's attention, and the feedback was extremely positive, with one Australia-based tweeter asking: "Can you send a couple of those bad boys down to Melbourne?"