REDMOND, Wash. – May 15, 2013 – Star Trek and Microsoft — a logical pairing, Spock might say.
Paramount Pictures thought so.
Star Trek Windows Phone app
May 15, 2013
The
unprecedented cross-company collaboration to promote “Star Trek: Into
Darkness” kicked off with apps for Windows Phone (shown here) and
Windows 8.
Image: Web
And that’s when executives from Paramount, on behalf of director J.J.
Abrams’ sequel to the 2009 wildly popular reimagining of the Star Trek
film franchise, set upon a course to seek Microsoft as a marketing
partner for the movie.
“We knew that linking with all the new, high-technology products and
services Microsoft offers consumers would be the perfect way to build
excitement for this latest Star Trek movie adventure,” says LeeAnne
Stables, executive vice president of Worldwide Marketing Partnerships at
Paramount Pictures. “Working with all the teams across Microsoft has
been an incredible experience for us.”
That kinship prompted Microsoft to boldly go where it’s never gone
before and launch an unprecedented cross-company partnership to promote
the new film. Virtually every
Microsoft consumer brand — Windows, Windows Phone, Xbox, Xbox LIVE, MSN,
Bing and Microsoft Stores — is coming together to help celebrate a huge
pop culture moment with the release of the film, says Jen Buckmaster,
senior marketing manager at Microsoft’s Lifestyle Marketing Group.
“Microsoft speaks to Trekkers and vice versa,” Buckmaster says. “Our
developers’ deep love for the Star Trek lore and interest in the J.J.
Abrams reboot of the film franchise helped bring together all of
Microsoft’s brands (in a compelling way) for the first time.”
The partnership officially jumped into warp drive earlier this month with the release of a Star Trek app for Windows Phone
and Windows 8. The app will enable fans to purchase tickets via
Fandango for the movie’s advance screening in IMAX on May 15, one day
before the official theatrical release. Fans can also get news about the
film, perform missions as a member of Starfleet Academy, enter
sweepstakes and watch exclusive behind-the-scenes videos.
Star Trek will continue to materialize across Microsoft’s products in
the days leading up to the film’s debut. Curious how to say “beam me up”
in Klingon? Microsoft today added Klingon to the list of supported languages on the Bing Translator.
Paramount connected Bing’s developers with CBS (long-term stewards of
all-things Star Trek), and in turn, the professor who created the
fictional Klingon language. They worked closely to feed enough Klingon
root words into the program to be able to translate just about any
phrase. Plus, Bing will have a special homage to the Star Trek franchise
on its home page to celebrate the new film, along with a few surprises up its sleeve if you enter the right phrase into the search engine.
Xbox SmartGlass
May 15, 2013
Xbox
SmartGlass will provide a rich second screen experience that gives
people access to behind-the-scenes footage from the 2009 film when they
watch the movie on Xbox Video on their Xbox 360. It will also provide
“Star Trek Into Darkness” exclusive trailers, videos and special
promotional offers.
Image: Web
For fans looking for deeper Star Trek features, Xbox SmartGlass will
provide a rich second-screen experience that gives people access to
behind-the-scenes footage from the 2009 film when they watch the movie
on Xbox Video on their Xbox 360. It will also provide “Star Trek Into
Darkness” exclusive trailers,
videos, and special promotional offers. “Star Trek: The Video Game” is
available for Xbox 360 and Windows PCs now.
Last month, as part of the launch of the company's first-ever Xbox
Video Awards, Microsoft invited Xbox LIVE users in the U.S., Canada and
Australia to submit their questions for J.J. Abrams through Facebook and
Twitter for a chance to have him answer them via video on Xbox LIVE
when the Xbox Video Award winners were announced.
The experience also extends beyond the screen. Actors from the new
film will beam into Microsoft Store locations in Toronto, San Francisco,
Seattle and Los Angeles leading up to the premiere, handing out tickets
to advance screenings.
‘Looking out toward the future’
The partnership started in December 2012 when Paramount hosted
Microsoft execs for a tour of J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot production facility
to see early film footage and meet the director. Within days a
Paramount team was visiting the Microsoft campus to discuss the
opportunity in detail. They thought a collaboration would be natural:
Star Trek and Microsoft are both iconic, forward-thinking,
technology-loving brands with intensely loyal fans. Together, they could
create an impactful pop culture event that would “have people buzzing
until stardate 2055.”
Buckmaster and her colleague Alison Pember were sold. Now they just
had to get all of Microsoft’s consumer brands to agree to a
cross-company campaign, which turned out not to be too hard. “Turns out
love for the Star Trek franchise runs deep at Microsoft,” Buckmaster
quips. Developers quickly got on board with the campaign, viewing it as a
passion project.
Rick Rashid with James Doohan
May 15, 2013
The
crown jewel in Chief Research Officer Rick Rashid’s office is this
photo with James Doohan, aka Scotty, with whom he shared a stage years
ago at a special Microsoft event.
While there is no shortage of Star Trek fans at Microsoft, the biggest
just might be Rick Rashid, the company’s chief research officer.
Rashid is a well-known Trekker. His office at Microsoft is crammed
with Star Trek paraphernalia, most of it gifts he’s received over the
years: props, posters, unproduced television scripts. The crown jewel is
a photo with James Doohan, aka Scotty, with whom he shared a stage
years ago at a special Microsoft event.
A sci-fi fan since childhood, Rashid was hooked from the moment he
watched his first Star Trek episode back in high school. “The whole idea
of looking out toward the future and constantly trying to discover new
things — those themes have always appealed to me,” he says.
They still resonate today at his day job. Some of the work Rashid
oversees at Microsoft Research (MSR) seems straight out of Star Trek.
Sometimes, it is. A few months ago, MSR researchers with backgrounds in
computer vision and machine learning came up with a way to make the
elevator in their building automatically open whenever someone walks up
to it — just like the doors on the Starship Enterprise, Rashid says.
What technology is he still waiting to see?
“I’m really looking forward to the teleporter,” Rashid says with a
laugh. “We’ve got some researchers doing quantum computing in Santa
Barbara, but we’re still a long way away from teleportation. For someone
like me who travels all the time, boy that would just make life a lot
better.”
Since the first Star Trek movie, Rashid has always taken the people
who work for him out to the theater. In 1979, that was two graduate
students. Next month he’ll take more than 500 MSR colleagues and their
friends and family out to see “Star Trek Into Darkness.”
He’ll be in his Captain Picard costume, naturally.
Rashid is eagerly awaiting the film. And he’s happy that Abrams has
helped expand the franchise’s audience beyond just Trekkers. But he
hopes the new fans don’t look askance at the more passionate moviegoers.
“If all you're paying attention to is people in costumes and pointy
ears, you're missing the point,” he says. “The enthusiasm for Star Trek
over the years has really been as much about the enthusiasm for a
positive future, for the opportunity for a better world, and the
excitement of discovery. If people focus on that, it's great.”
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