Make Your Wish

Uncertainty rules, especially with company decision-makers, and Microsoft wants to actively counter this in order to promote this important technology in Germany.

Microsoft is convinced that Artificial Intelligence must be developed for people and with people. For this purpose, an AI culture needs to be created to guarantee implementation of ethics and transparency and thus assuage any fears about this technology.

Launch of the initiative in the partner community (target groups close to Microsoft)

For the German partner conference in Leipzig and the Inspire developer conference in Berlin, were large-scale posters at the train station and airport on the way to the events ensured awareness. In addition, momentum was generated around the dates of the events by a print collaboration with the print title “Bilanz”.

Ensuring coverage and traffic with digital channels (broad target groups).

By using organic social posts and paid social posts, broad coverage was achieved with pinpoint targeting in order to mobilise the target groups of AI solution enablers and AI participants to take part in Make Your Wish.

To bring interested parties closer to the topic, the topics of the future, cloud technology and ethics with regard to AI were highlighted on the website with short videos and articles.

And to invite active participation in Make Your Wish:

Submit ideas for improving the world
“How should Artificial Intelligence be applied so that everyone benefits from it?” With this appeal on social media, Microsoft asked people to not only engage with AI, but also to share their ideas with the world on our web platform (Wish Hub).
Becoming realisers of wishes
Microsoft began its first activation at its German partner conference for partners and clients. Awareness for this important role was also generated via paid media. Each implementation partner chose a project to implement from the wishes submitted.

The ideas and project suggestions were collected on the Wish Hub up until 28/02/19 and rated by the community. A jury of experts selected three winning ideas, each of which were rewarded with a Surface Studio Workstation. Decisive factors for the choice were Microsoft’s ethical AI principles and the benefits of the solution. The five best ideas overall were invited to Berlin for the Microsoft AI Festival.

The grand finale: Starting thoughts and discussions about AI

The Microsoft AI Festival in Berlin on 09/04/19 saw ideas exchanged between AI experts, business decision makers, scientists, politicians and users. Together, they discussed and developed the future of Artificial Intelligence, and the wish projects with the highest potential were awarded prize money to implement them by an expert jury and the participants on site.

Dialogue, PR and cooperation

The initiative was also fueled by the occupation of industrial newsletters, mail-outs in the form of 1:1, personalised communication, and adverts in cooperation with IDG, Media Impact and Heise (Make Your Wish presentation at the “Innovators Summit”). The wider public was reached through a broad spectrum of content formats (online/offline) such as activating social waves on Twitter, strong partnerships with the news portals “Die Welt” and “Bilanz”, classic marketing and press releases.