The Last.fm Hack Day was a live event at the Old Truman Brewery in Shoreditch, East London where coders could 'get under the bonnet' of Last.fm, giving them the tools to create web applications to enhance the Last.fm experience. We knew that traditional online advertising techniques would have limited impact. We had to tap into the passions of coders and allow them to earn respect from their peers by showcasing their skills. Making Microsoft the facilitator of this experience would help decrease the stigma around the brand and drive product trial.

Our brief was to communicate Microsoft's latest developer software; Visual Studio '08 and drive product trial. To do this we knew we had to overcome negativity about the brand by thinking of an unconventional solution.

The Last.fm Hack Day was a live event at the Old Truman Brewery in Shoreditch, East London where coders could 'get under the bonnet' of Last.fm, giving them the tools to create web applications to enhance the Last.fm experience

50,000 UK 'Coders' (roughly 20%) saw the promotion on either Last.fm or the target sites carrying our sign-posting (Atlas/Comscore). 150 'Coders' spent over 8 hours of their weekend with Microsoft (Source: Last.fm). More than 30 applications are available for Last.fm users to download, amounting to in excess of 8,000 downloads to date. This campaign drove 300% more trials than traditional online advertising, delivering more than 300 trials!

That all of the above elements worked really well in collaboration with each other to deliver a successful case study.