Alex Steer

324 words | ~2 min

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.