Microsoft Launches Piracy-Fighting Viral Marketing Campaign in Hong Kong

Microsoft is launching a viral web campaign today in Hong Kong that’s aimed at reducing software piracy. The spot centres around a short comedy/drama series called Dream Break, where input from viewers via social media will affect the course of the plot before it hits its pre-set finalé at the end of next month.

The video series has a Microsoft homepage – take a look here – and its own official YouTube channel, and will engage with HKers via Facebook, Twitter, Sina Weibo, MSN Messenger, and email. It’s run in Cantonese Chinese. It features a Scrooge-y local businessman – played by local TV host/celeb Bob Lam (pictured above) – who finds himself in prison on charges of software piracy at his company. His aim, in the ongoing web serial, is to escape prison.

Personally, I’m hoping he manages to escape and then flees to Panama aboard a massive yacht called Screw U MS – but I doubt that’ll happen.

Seriously though, the educational message of the campaign is that it’s better to go legit. Also, as ad industry moguls Campaign China point out, piracy within a company of any size in HK can indeed land its CEO or directors in jail, as they’re legally accountable for such practices going on at their firm.

This is Microsoft’s first attempt at combatting piracy via social/viral marketing. Mainland China – not including HK – represents the company’s biggest bugbear in terms of software piracy. On numerous occasions, CEO Steve Ballmer has railed against in-grained bootlegging of its software – from Windows XP and 7, right up to full copies of MS Office. In mainland China, Microsoft tends to follow a more low-profile and measured mission of finding offending companies and hitting them with a huge bill to purchase legal copies of everything they’ve pirated. For now, this viral campaign is limited to the borders of the HK SAR.

Here’s today’s first part of the Dream Break series, which is just over three minutes long (or readers in China can watch just the trailer over on Youku):