Free Time Machine Recap Shows Why Microkia Should Scrap Unpromoted Events

Not sure why Microsoft is into impromptu events but it’s a bad marketing idea. When they had the giant Windows Phone in NYC a while back no one in NYC knew it was happening and thus no buzz. Then the Nicki Minaj event was cool but again no one knew she was going to be there and the details weren’t floated in advance. Again, in NYC terms it wasn’t a huge event. So out comes the Free Time Machine events. The details were unveiled yesterday. Why? No idea. So most people didn’t know they were happening and the turnout was…well let’s look.

The NYC event was by far the best. Part of that is location – Bryant Park always has a lot of people so add that to a celeb (Kourtney Kardasian)  and add in some media with Fox affiliates and you actually had a decent turn out and a decent event. Here’s their video of it:

And I can’t help but to note that Kourtney was using her Blackberry to Tweet so clearly they’ didn’t prep her right and hand her a white Lumia to show off and get hooked on:

Now let’s compare this to the ‘crowds’ in Chicago and San Francisco. I don’t know how the locations were picked but you hear one participant say he was just in the area. That’s the problem. You want an event. You can see in the videos the crowd control ropes are there and unused. That’s just bad event planning. If you want hype you need to build hype and that means promoting an event well in advance and getting people who live in the area aware and eager to get out there.

Here’s the official blog post on it. For my two cents I think they could have spent the some money and gotten a lot more out of it…hope they learn as this continues.