Microsoft: No Business Left Behind

Microsoft wanted to reach small and medium businesses across ASEAN and Asia's emerging markets with information about its cloud products, in countries where SMEs make up most of the economy but had little exposure to cloud tools and no local Microsoft content to guide them.

The company's New Markets cluster covered Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Vietnam, each with its own language and business culture. Microsoft needed a B2B lead generation and stakeholder education programme that was localised enough to be useful and coordinated enough to run as one campaign.

Microsoft chose to lead the campaign out of Myanmar, one of the first times it had run a regional programme from that market, based on the agency's track record in the cluster. The team proposed a multi-market campaign built around No Business Left Behind, a single creative idea and message architecture that each market could localise.

The centrepiece was a digital small business playbook with interactive elements, delivered as a microsite so it could be distributed at scale and generate leads. In Vietnam the programme became Transforming Vietnamese Business in the Digital Era, with the playbook, thought leadership pieces and an event concept adapted into Vietnamese. The same assets and event format were reused across other markets, giving Microsoft consistent messaging with local relevance.