At Microsoft Advertising, we’re here to ignite creativity, ground it in context, and deliver it seamlessly through connected experiences. We take every bit and byte of it and send it on a direct digital journey, with extensive reach, precision, targeting, never compromising imagination and spark. That’s creativity… and that is exactly what Stephen Kim, GM of Global Creative Solutions, shared with our partners at our Business Conference in Cannes.

Stephen’s team is completely focused on letting creativity do its thing and he showed us this as he took us on a journey of Microsoft solutions around the world.

United States - Fresh Perspectives: The team was challenged to target a younger, affluent audience in an effort with Lexus to launch a new vehicle, the CT Hybrid. The GCS team landed on Fresh Perspectives, a multi-media content experience combined with social artwork. The Paint Your Profile feature takes a consumer’s Facebook profile and turns it into an abstract personal piece of art, creating an experience entirely unique to each consumer. Watch the demo, see it in action.

Latin America - Xperia Impro Live: With it being exceedingly difficult to run global campaigns, the team partnered with Sony Ericsson to create a live improvisation experience. Consumers could use Twitter, Facebook, and other social sites to influence the improvisation in real time. Actors actually incorporated feedback from the online audience to adjust their improv. Running across seven markets and two languages, this experience shows that by using creativity you can scale globally.

China - The Creators Project: In a proof of concept for Intel, the team needed to take a series of global art exhibitions and bring them to life in a digital experience. By building leveraging Microsoft Photosynth technology, they were able to create one iconic brand image out of thousands of other images. With deep zoom, consumers could dive in to view more photos from the event in HD. I was impressed when Stephen zoomed in and I could see beads of sweat on a performer. Rather than creating a gallery of images, we can make something that has a lead image representing the brand. See it in action with this demo.

Stephen, next, shared some future innovations that aren’t too far away from releasing.

  • Mapping today enables us to get around the world. What if we could go in and add crowd-sourced content to actually stitch together a seamless three-dimensional photo of the world. He showed us examples where photos were stitched into the exact place on the map. You could potentially see what buildings looked like years ago, almost a sense of virtual time traveling.
  • He showcased a hero player launching later this year that opens from the main image on MSN into a video player carousel overlay, one with branded backgrounds. It started with a video and then threads in elements like polls, articles, videos, and more to allow the consumer to explore and discover.
  • And finally, launching July 5 in the U.S. and then rolling out to other markets, he shared how multiscreen themes will allow advertisers to take a single theme and create a consistently served set of content out on Messenger, Mobile, your desktop, and soon Xbox.

Today, Stephen opened us up to a world of creativity; a world that is limitless thanks to the innovations in technology that we are seeing today. Read about more coverage of our Business Conference with posts on context and connected experiences.

Keep following our live coverage of Cannes Lions 2011.

Best,

Kaila Lightner, Marketing Manager