
"I Won The Windows Phone Challenge, But Lost 'Just Because'" - AgentConundrum
http://skattertech.com/2012/03/i-won-the-windows-phone-challenge-but-lost-just-because/
======
Lewisham
Microsoft has a knack for choosing (and approving) the most boneheaded PR
stints in the business... do they pay companies for this nonsense or do they
just come up with it themselves?

In a nutshell, the campaign is "Watch us humiliate you and the phone you are
spending a lot of your hard-earned money on." Why would anyone think that
making consumers feel _bad_ is going to lead them to having the warm, fuzzy
feelings necessary to buy their product?

Last year's marketing for Windows Phone was awful because it _didn't show the
phone_. Show the phone! It looks great. Tell consumers why they should want
it. Not "it does what your phone does, just a bit faster in rigged
competitions." Show it working with Xbox. With Hotmail. Show its hubs. "Ever
wonder what Dave is doing? On Facebook? On Foursquare? On Twitter? Now you
know."

Apple and Google keep knocking their campaigns out the park because they're
built on honesty. Microsoft's campaigns are built on gimmicks and bullshit,
and it shows.

~~~
stfu
Absolutely. The idea is just asking for trouble - there will always be at
least some dude who feels that he was treaded unfairly and reallies up the
internets. Plus I am not sure how important the "speed" factor for most users
really is. There are the fuzzy Apples, the Androids of freedom, the business
berrys, but I am not sure if speed is an adequate positioning.

~~~
ugh
Emphasizing speed misses qualities people actually love about Windows Phone 7
by miles. Only someone who is disconnected from or unfamiliar with the product
will come up with stuff like that.

There is the stark and fresh design that (independently of whatever merits it
might have) makes other mobile operating systems look old. There is the
cohesiveness of the experience that even makes iOS look like it doesn’t know
what it wants to be. There is the integration with Facebook that makes the
phone personal without having to do anything†.

All those are things actual people praised about Windows Phone 7. Not speed in
some highly constrained scenarios.

—

† If you use Facebook a lot. This might shock some people on HN, but most
people who also can buy a smartphone do.

~~~
onemoreact
Can you be more specific? I found Windows Phone 7 to be terrible as in worse
than Android, iPhone, and Blackberry bad. The tile interface falls down vary
quickly and the app store is a ghost town.

~~~
Yhippa
How is WP7 worse than the others? How does the tile interface "fall down"?

~~~
onemoreact
There is a lot I don't like about Windows 7 phones but I am going to stick
with the tile interface because it's the most obviously bad design.

Smooth scrolling looks cool, but locating something in the middle of a long
list is much easier with separate pages. Which is not such a big deal, but
tiles take up more space than the old button interface so you don't get to
display a lot of them at the same time.

Basicly, 2 tiles wide * 4 tiles tall = at most 8 per tiles page. Sliding up
and down one page works fine, but what if you want 17 tiles? you now slide a
little and look for what you want to hit which you can't do with muscle
memory. Compare with both iPhone and Android which fit 20 apps per page just
fine no scrolling required.

As to updates, texts, email, phone calls have value. Knowing what temperature
is is right now in two city's at the same time is practically pointless. As in
how often do you want this vs. the actual forecast over some period of time?

PS: And I don't say this as someone that hates MS. I am a C# developer, with
an MSDN subscription who like a lot of what they have been up to recently. I
even liked Vista on good hardware, but I just think there phone OS is
terrible.

------
noonespecial
It sounds to me like all of the contests were set to be won by
_preconfiguration_ , not phone speed. Having two live-tiles already set up
with the winning condition, known in advance only by the employee is hardly a
contest.

They didn't just not want to pay out. They likely didn't even know how. It was
never even considered a possibility.

~~~
recoiledsnake
>They didn't just not want to pay out. They likely didn't even know how. It
was never even considered a possibility.

There have been previous losses and money was paid.

[http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/windowsphone/arch...](http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/windowsphone/archive/2012/01/12/video-
windows-phone-wins-88-of-smokedbywindowsphone-challenges-at-ces-2012.aspx)

This might be a couple of rogue employees doing this instead of a company
policy.

~~~
vibrunazo
That seems like a different and very specific event. But have there been any
actual laptops awarded on these window store competitions?

------
bobbles
This reddit discussion has many people coming forward that 'won' and then
didn't get anything for it:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/rdgtz/i_won_the_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/rdgtz/i_won_the_windows_phone_challenge_but_lost_just/)

There is also a post by someone that 'tied' and then went to win on the next
turn, even though their own terms of the contest state that in the event of a
tie, the customer wins.

~~~
ilamont
Here's one example:

 _TL;DR They were throttling their wifi and when I beat them with LTE they
didn't pay up saying it has to be one the first try._

[http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/rdgtz/i_won_the_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/rdgtz/i_won_the_windows_phone_challenge_but_lost_just/c45037b)

Another one:

 _I too took on the challenge. Which was to post a message to facebook and
email the same message to myself as well. Microsoft phone has a me tile, that
posts to social media through windows live. Which is connected to your other
social media networks such as Facebook, twitter and linked in. However, it
does not email you. The guy argued that posting a status to windows live did
the same thing. It does not, and therefore I lost._

[http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/rdgtz/i_won_the_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/rdgtz/i_won_the_windows_phone_challenge_but_lost_just/c44yu6a)

But a few said they were able to win a gift certificate, like this person:

 _The first challenge was to find a five star restaurant in the area. I used
my voice feature to search Google and yelled got it. Right when I said got it
the employee was naming a restaurant and said we tied...So the second one was
find a movie time for a movie playing in the theater at Tysons Corner. I used
my voice to text feature again to search Google and found a time. This time
there were like 3 other employees around and one of them said, "Dude, he got
it." The manager eventually came out with my $100 gift card. They have it all
set up on their phone to just click a button and the answer pops up. For some
reason, the movie application took longer to load then normal which is why I
won._

[http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/rdgtz/i_won_the_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/rdgtz/i_won_the_windows_phone_challenge_but_lost_just/c44zwkz)

------
vibrunazo
How exactly does these work? Are the competitor only told the rules (what you
should actually do) just at the time and not allowed to make any preparation.
While the windows phone is prepared specifically for that task? (I'd imagine
showing 2 separate weather apps in the homescreen isn't something the average
windows phone will be prepared for. Or the ones I saw certainly didn't)

------
fruchtose
There needs to be a public apology over this. Maybe I am too naive, but it's
disheartening that Microsoft would use such shady advertising tactics. I am
sure that employees were not allowed to actually award participants any money.
If this instruction did not come down from corporate, it probably originated
from a manager with a desire to impress the higher-ups.

------
bravura
After you say you won but were told you lost, 'I was then asked to snap a
photo in front of a sign that read along the lines of “My Android was smoked
by Windows Phone” before leaving the store.'

You should have declined.

~~~
AgentConundrum
I didn't write this post. I added quotes around the title to try to
distinguish this point.

That said, I agree. The OP commented on the reddit thread for this[1], which
is where I found this before posting it to HN, and said that he took the
picture because he had signed something agreeing to be used in advertising.
Other commenters pointed out that Microsoft had broken the agreement already
so he was under no obligation to comply.

Without having read the rules, which may list specific obligations, my
reaction is that I would have told them that they were perfectly welcome to
use whatever footage or photos they had taken during the event, but that there
was no way I would pose for them after they refused to admit I'd won.

[1]
[http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/rdgtz/i_won_the_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/rdgtz/i_won_the_windows_phone_challenge_but_lost_just/)

~~~
bravura
"Other commenters pointed out that Microsoft had broken the agreement already
so he was under no obligation to comply."

Additionally, it would have turned into a way worse PR fiasco if in any way
they tried to force him to comply. So legally and practically, nothing would
have happened.

------
atularora
Someone from Microsoft did apologize -
<https://twitter.com/#!/BenThePCGuy/status/184123838949359616>

~~~
potatolicious
Wow. Just wow. Just when you think they couldn't possibly bungle this any
further.

tl;dr: MS rep apologizes and invites him back for a rematch. Because it's like
he hasn't already won the challenge or something.

~~~
zalew
did you just provide a TLDR for a tweet?!

~~~
ben0x539
Following a twitter link involves copying the url, pasting it to the address
bar, backspacing the "#!/" and adding "m." before twitter.com, because
twitter's dumb hashbang scheme can't deal with noscript. Reading the tl;dr is
much faster!

~~~
ranit8
I use noscript and I get this horrible url, but it shows the correct tweet
(i'm not logged in). Yet it's much better reading the posted tldr.

    
    
      https://twitter.com/BenThePCGuy/statuses/184123838949359616?_escaped_fragment_=/BenThePCGuy/status/184123838949359616#!/BenThePCGuy/status/184123838949359616

------
talmand
Seems to me the MS employee was cheating to begin with by choosing a task the
phone was already configured for that is not a normal use. The guy even
realized this at that moment when he felt he won out of pure luck. The
challenge might as well have been "let's see who can display a logo of a
Microsoft product on the screen first".

------
Hari_Seldon
Still can't get used to these Microsoft Stores. I should probably get over it,
but every time time I see one, it strikes me that they're copying Apple in a
really lame way.

~~~
Drbble
Visiting UVillage in Seattle is bizarre. You get the Apple Store that we all
know. And you get the Sony Style store which is like the Apple Store but
overcomplicated and weird in that Sony way, with 3-D TVs and pink Memory
Sticks. And now we have the Microsoft Store, directly across the parking lot
from Apple, with exactly the same floorplan and layout, but made with
chintzier materials and a distracting video wall and Surface table locked on
to a nonsensical tower defense game. It's like Windows incarnate: an ugly copy
of Apple design, with no comprehension of why the Apple design works.

Google should open a store too, and fill it with a bunch of free toys and
cover the walls with third-party ads.

~~~
fruchtose
Google would have to open several different stores. They are all slightly
different as the interior designer sees fit, and the plans for each are all
several years outdated. Each store is several different stories tall, but some
sections have been roped off and are in the process of being demolished--even
though some people liked those parts. All the employees ask if you know other
people who have been to the store, even though you don't use the Google store
enough to care. Occasionally sales reps walk up to you and ask you if you want
to buy a product tangentially related to something you were just thinking
about ( _how did they know?_ ); all you can do is shake your head and walk
away until the next salesperson comes up to you. Overall you get the feeling
that you'd rather be in and out of the store as quickly as possible.

------
Vergle
Incredibly grating story, I hope someone is made to apologize.

------
wizzard
How maddening. Don't create promotions like this if you're not going to pay
out.

~~~
mlreed328
Seriously. Who dreams this stuff up?

It can't go well in the age of the Internet. This is the top story on a couple
of sites I read. All it would take is for the mainstream (non-tech) press to
pick it up to create some real bad publicity.

------
rbanffy
Actually, a much more realistic image of that specific Microsoft Store is
here:

[https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/112837958187789332975/alb...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/112837958187789332975/albums/5719596296605234049/5719613308177275186)

~~~
jcromartie
I was confused as to why there was a picture of an Apple Store with the
article... I always forget that there is such a thing as a Microsoft Store.

~~~
rbanffy
The funny trivia is that Microsoft's store is almost exactly in front of the
Apple Store. The previous picture in the album was taken from that Apple Store
a couple seconds earlier.

------
robryan
Can't say the ability to see 2 cities weather at the same time has even been
important in my choice of phone. These should really be based on things people
are actually considering when buying a phone otherwise they seem really
pointless.

------
pasbesoin
I'm not certain how one would gain sufficient attention/interest to cause an
effective response, but IIRC (and IANAL) such contests typically have rather
strict laws to follow; the foremost but not sole reason being, to avoid being
categorized as gambling. Another being to avoid being used or misused as a
mechanism to distribute payments to favored parties (one reason for the
ubiquitous disclaimers that employees of company XYZ are ineligible to
participate).

If they are not adhering to the rules that define their contest, they may be
at risk of some significant criminal infractions.

------
pbhjpbhj
Isn't this fraud?

------
lucisferre
Anyone remember the Pepsi challenge? Anyone remember Pepsi?

------
KenCochrane
Well, even if you did really win, you would have still lost, your prize would
have been a windows laptop, who wants one of those anyway?

------
acerimmer
Perhaps the employees can keep every $1000 they don't lose. That would be a
strong motivation for cheating.

Or they have a quota for losses per day.

~~~
kamjam
You think that perhaps they get to keep the quota of laptops that have not
been won?

I know if I was working in one of those stores an awful lot of my friends
would be smoking the windows phone... sorry, ahem, not friends, I meant
"random strangers that I have never met before, isn't that right"...

------
hsshah
This reminds me of their Vista PR stunt where they tricked unsuspecting users
to give favorable feedback about Vista on camera.

~~~
jasonlotito
While what you say is accurate, its misleading. The reviews were accurate, and
favorable. They just weren't told it was Vista (iirc, they were told it was
the next version).

------
tbsdy
Perhaps time to provide the store with some feedback?
[http://mymfe.microsoft.com/Microsoft%20%20Store/Feedback.asp...](http://mymfe.microsoft.com/Microsoft%20%20Store/Feedback.aspx?formID=70&Market=en-
us)

------
alvarosm
All Microsoft contests are like that, just promotional. They choose the winner
according to what they think will look better for Microsoft itself.

I participated in the Imagine Cup a few years ago when I was finishing college
and our project was technically light-years ahead of the others. We got only
the 3rd place. Two ridiculous web app-like gimmicks were 1st and 2nd. Oh and
the guy in 5th place clearly deserved the 2nd place.

Even though I knew what it would be like beforehand, I have to admit I didn't
anticipate getting screwed so badly. Our project was so cool there was no way
it couldn't win, right? apparently not, Microsoft has no shame. It left a
bitter aftertaste. On the other hand, I liked the 3rd place prize better than
the 1st prize :)

~~~
TomGullen
How can we possibly sympathise with this? The OP is about a definitive
injustice, no one could possibly comment on your case

~~~
alvarosm
¿? I don't want you to sympathise or comment on my case, why would I?. I'm
just saying that's how any Microsoft contest works, they use people and when
things don't turn out the exact way Microsoft wants they screw them.

My point is this is not an isolated case, it's Microsoft policy.

