Merry Christmas from Microsoft … and the Conn Family

This holiday season there is much for us to be thankful for and to celebrate across the Company: The successful launch of Windows 10; some of the coolest hardware on the planet such as Surface Book and Surface Pro 4; advancing perceptions of Microsoft as a Cloud leader; and continuing to move up the ranks of most admired and trusted brands to name just a few. Thank you for making our businesses successful and for making Microsoft an amazing place to work.

In the spirit of reflection and thankfulness, we wanted to offer a message of peace, hope and coming together. To that end, our Global Advertising team partnered with the Microsoft Stores team to create something to celebrate the idea that this is the time of year to set aside our differences and celebrate what connects us. We recently opened a beautiful flagship Microsoft Store on 5th Avenue in New York City, right down the street from the Apple Store. We thought: what if we paid our neighbor a visit in the spirit of the holidays and shared a message of harmony with them in the form of a holiday carol, neighbor-to-neighbor?

We recruited real store employees, asking them to submit audition tapes of themselves singing holiday songs. The response was tremendous and the talent was amazing! We picked about 30 employees to bring to New York — for many it was the first time ever! They were joined by a local youth choir and what happened was pretty magical! We’re really proud of this advertisement.

On the Conn Family front, it was great to have both the girls home for the holidays from their respective colleges (Northwestern University & University of Miami) Both colleges are in Bowl Games this year — first time in a long time for the recently out-of-suspension Miami Hurricanes (in the Sun Bowl vs WSU) and the perennial underdog Northwestern Wildcats (in the Outback Bowl vs Tennessee).

A big event in the first month of 2016 will be Suzy’s Industry Reading for Chick Flick the Musical. So, for this year’s Christmas we decided to go the “Full Griswold” and match the Chick Flick the Musical logo colors of blue/pink with a blue/pink Christmas tree combination from our favorite Christmas site, Treetopia. I think it came out pretty well:

Chick Flick the Musical Christmas Trees 2015 LANDSCAPE

Merry Christmas everyone!