Microsoft Holiday Campaigns

Role: Concepting, Art Direction, Visual Design

As an art director on the Campaigns team in the Store Studio at Microsoft, I worked alongside our creative director and led a small team of designers on Microsoft’s 2021 and 2022 global Holiday campaigns, which is Microsoft’s biggest campaign of the year across the globe. My responsibilities included ideation, co-leading collaboration sessions, hands-on digital design for a variety of channels (web, demand gen, social media, CRM, etc.) and providing direction and feedback for static and animated creative. My role ensured the creative worked on a local and global level by overseeing the development of a 100+ page toolkit, as well as countless creative assets that were distributed to a wide range of partners all over the world.

2021 Holiday

The 2021 Holiday campaign was unlike any that I had worked on in my career thus far. My team and I were tasked to come up with a fresh, new, global campaign for the upcoming holiday season. Inclusivity and celebrating many cultures and regions around the world was top of mind for us instead of melding various parts of the world into a “one design fits all” concept.

Our process included conducting a thorough competitive analysis, color research, frequent virtual brainstorming and moodboarding sessions, and, once a concept was selected, we spent several weeks building and refining the creative.

The end result was a 100+ page campaign toolkit and that was adopted by all areas of the company and 3rd-party vendors worldwide, to ensure a consistent customer experience. Post-campaign launch partner feedback was extremely positive. I heard statements like, “This was the best Holiday creative to date, the campaign looked premium yet festive and it was the most inclusive campaign to date due to a variety of colors and global elements.”

2022 Holiday

Due to the huge success of the 2021 Holiday campaign, my team and I were asked by our partners to refresh the creative for the 2022 campaign instead of coming up with an entirely new concept. After spending a few weeks brainstorming and riffing, what unfolded was an elevated creative system with a more 3D look and feel inspired by Fluent design, which aligned with the direction that the all-up Microsoft brand was moving in.

Many of 2021’s favorite characters and elements were back with a vibrant, more energetic palette and various textures to add dimension and depth. The festive design system offered a range of support to keep the product in the spotlight—from subtle hints of holiday to a vibrant element spectrum to meet all of Microsoft’s partner’s needs around the globe from October through January.

Most importantly, this campaign was truly a team effort with every one of us bringing our skills and expertise to create each one of the pieces that you see below. The team included myself, a 3D designer, two senior visual designers, an editorial lead, and creative director. We collaborated effortlessly and created a beautiful campaign that I am so proud of.