Microsoft didn’t make Curry Barker shoot a laptop commercial. It gave him a laptop and told him to make a movie.
Following the breakout success of Obsession, the horror filmmaker teamed with Microsoft Windows and Droga5 for Mama Bear, a new short designed to function as both entertainment and a real-world stress test for the Surface Laptop Ultra.
The challenge was simple:
Edit and finish the entire film unplugged.
Barker completed the project on Microsoft’s new Surface Laptop Ultra, which the company bills as its most powerful Surface Laptop yet and says loses less than 1% of performance when disconnected from an outlet.
Instead of building a traditional product demo around benchmarks, windows and processor speeds, Microsoft put the machine inside an actual creative workflow.
The result is Mama Bear, Barker’s latest horror short, which debuted around Halloween on his social channels. The film follows Floyd, a house cleaner who receives a cryptic call from a friend and quickly begins wondering whether what he’s hearing is a prank – or a warning.
The technology stays largely behind the scenes.
That’s the point.
The campaign is the first real-world demonstration of Microsoft Windows’ new Droga5-created brand platform, “What will you do with all this power?”
Rather than telling audiences what the laptop can handle, the campaign lets Barker show them.The campaign is the first real-world demonstration of Microsoft Windows’ new Droga5-created brand platform, “What will you do with all this power?” Watch below:
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‘Obsession’ director Curry Barker drops new horror short
“After Obsession, we were just as excited as everyone else to see what Curry Barker would do next,” said Gil Kuruneri, group creative director at Microsoft. “We loved the idea of putting the most advanced Windows laptop ever in his hands and seeing where his imagination would take him.”
Barker wasn’t the only one putting the machine through its paces. Indie production company Corridor Digital, best known for its Corridor Crew VFX channel, handled visual effects and behind-the-scenes content for Mama Bear using the Surface Laptop Ultra as well.
That makes the campaign less about celebrity endorsement and more about proof through process.
Cristina Reina, chief creative experience officer at Droga5 New York and the Americas, said the goal was to create a product demonstration that didn’t feel like one. “The best product demonstrations shouldn’t feel like demonstrations. They should be entertaining,” Reina said. “With Mama Bear, the proof is built into the creative idea itself.”
That line gets at why the execution works.
Creative technology campaigns often spend so much time telling creators they can make anything that they forget to actually show someone making something worth watching.
Here, the filmmaking is the demonstration.
The battery life is the claim.
And the horror short is the ad.
Additional demo films and behind-the-scenes content from Corridor Digital are rolling out across Barker’s, Corridor Digital’s and Microsoft’s YouTube, Instagram and TikTok channels.
For Microsoft, it’s a smart way to introduce a new creative platform.
Don’t tell artists how powerful your machine is.
Hand it to one and get out of the way.
Watch Mama Bear here.
CREDITS:
BRAND: Microsoft
- Advertising: Charles Kha
- Social: Markus Frieske
- Creative Director: Rodrigo Moran
- Creative Director: Gil Kuruneri
- Partnerships: Joey Maestas
- Creative: Sophia Aymond
- Strategist: Ashley Van Der Laan
- Strategist: Lee Smith
- Tech Lead: David Cliff
- Creative: Nico Mejia
AGENCY: Droga5 New York
- Chief Executive Officer: Mark Green
- Chief Strategy Officer: Emma Montgomery
- Chief Creative Officer: Rafa Rizuto
- Chief Experience Officer: Cristina Reina
- Executive Creative Director: Leo Barbosa
- Group Creative Director: Pepe Funegra
- Creative Director: Tom Francesconi
- Creative Director: Ant Tull
- Designer: Kaine Asika
- Head of Production: Ruben Mercadal
- Head of Production: Jenn Mann
- Producer: Dave Stephenson
- Producer: Dakota Brockman
- Producer: Ava Swarup
- Talent Manager: Sunny Valencia
- Talent Manager: Rachel Minow
- Business Affairs Director: Dan Simonetti
- Business Affairs Manager: Andrea Fagan
- Strategy Director: Andrew Quay
- Strategy Director: Tattiana Bamba
- Strategist: Vanessa Zielinski
- Account Director: Elizabeth Federico
- Group Account Director: Danielle DiMarino
- Account Director: Kelsey Quinn
- Account Director: Roxy Alberts
- Account Manager: Lauren LaTulippe
- Project Manager: Jiwon Kim
- Creative: Ann-Christine Diaz
AGENCY: Poster Child
- Founder: James Brownstein
- Account Director: Emily Tepper
PRODUCTION COMPANY: Hoff Studios
- Director: Curry Barker
- Director of Photography: Riley Barker
- Executive Producer: Brian Hoff
- Executive Producer: Laura Lucchetti
- Executive Producer: Evelina Trapani
- Producer: Jenna Lonergan
- Producer: Alex Nelsen
- Producer: Kelsea Davis
- Line Producer: Mark Conley
- Production Designer: Vivian Gray
- Costume Designer: James Blair
- Director of Photography: Evan Urman
- Line Producer: Stella Psomias
- Coordinator: Amanda Price
- Coordinator: Ivanna Cardenas
- Production Assistant: Chloe Roman
