Alex Steer

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Microsoft: Work From Here. Until you drop.

324 words

If you travel by train in the UK you might have seen Microsoft's new ad campaign for Office 365. It's called 'Work From Here' and it's a really smart piece of media thinking. Creative Review has the details - they've taken over train stations, railway carriages, ticket halls etc., to reinforce the point that with Office 365 you can work from anywhere.

Thing is, while I like the media (and the creative), I really don't like the thought.

Read the above: Here's where Lisa finalised the figures and posted them just after eight.

Get a life, Lisa.

There are plenty more in the same vein. I saw one about a guy called Ben getting some documents to his angry boss in the nick of time. Poor Ben.

If 'work from here' is supposed to be liberating, I think it has the opposite effect. Office 365 comes across as the successor to the Crackberry, a tool that makes sure you can never blame the mere fact of being away from your desk - or it being night-time, or a weekend, or anything else - for your failure to deliver some unspecified documentation to someone, somewhere. Because whichever 'eight', morning or evening, Lisa is sending her documents at, it's probably a time she should be seeing friends or loved ones instead of Excel-jockeying her life away.

So thanks, Microsoft, for reminding us that wherever we are, whatever we're doing, in any railway station throughout the land, we shouldn't be buying a coffee or playing Angry Birds or browsing the weird souvenirs in WH Smiths. We should be working.

Image via Creative Review, used with thanks.

# Alex Steer (14/04/2013)