Friday 21 November 2014

Sold Down the River

On Wednesday night Windows decided to demonstrate just how third they are in the mobile phone market in the UK.

It turns out that not even recruiting the most likely to go viral of all mountain bikers can make anyone really pay attention to the Windows phone. What they did was to essentially recreate the story in MacAskill’s Imaginate film to build to a big stunt involving a loop floating on the Thames in front of a crowd of bike journalists and bloggers.

The thing is that this lacked something. All the glitz, lighting and MacAskill’s undeniable talent can’t hide that this is a trick we’ve seen before in exactly that Imaginate video, as well as in more interesting ways since. It’s a brilliant stunt and Danny Mac pulls it with aplomb, but it’s not new and it’s not enough to catch the imagination of the biking public, nor more widely.

Arguably those that did notice the spectacle simply asked themselves whether Microsoft are really just releasing a feature on their phones that Apple and Android have had for years. Perhaps Windows phones have had it as well, but that’s not what anyone will take from this. You can almost imagine the meeting at the agency where they came up with this, a little too late for it to be new in any way.

Still, let’s see it. It is dramatic in a corporate way and you can’t blame the Scottish trials star from taking the money. Here it is:


I look forward to my cheque from Bill Gates.

A

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