Microsoft: Customer Stories in Myanmar

Microsoft was generally unknown in many of its emerging markets, and especially in Myanmar, among the businesses and key customers it needed to win. The company had some early successes with local customers, but those successes were not being used to shape how the wider market understood Microsoft's values and solutions.

Microsoft needed a strategy that would take control of customer understanding, using evidence that businesses in Myanmar would find credible: the experience of their peers.

Ruder Finn Era, then ERA Communications, developed a strategy that shared the spotlight with Microsoft's customers, drawing on their renown and market position to tell the Microsoft story. Each customer story was produced as a set: advertorials, media articles, a special feature on the Microsoft website with video, a blog write-up and creative storytelling materials for the sales teams.

Giving a face to the customer made the technology tangible and attracted the attention of similar businesses in the same sectors, including financial services, telecoms and FMCG, who could see themselves in the story.