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Microsoft Office 12 is No Longer a Mystery

Animated series “Office Noir” takes viewers on a humorous, pulp-comic jaunt through Microsoft’s upcoming feature-rich Office release

SEATTLE, WA—March 06, 2006—“Smell the Office 12, dev boy, and maybe you'll move out of your mama’s basement before you're 30,” declares Microsoft Office’s latest sassy spokeswoman, Kate Wolf, in Chapter 1 of the animated mystery series Office Noir. A far cry from former Office mouthpiece “Clippy,” Kate has a refreshingly brassy attitude that sets the tone for the Office Noir series, a quirky mix of 1940s pulp-comic sensibility and a modern, technologically savvy world.

Office Noir is the brainchild of Microsoft’s Office Evangelism Team and Red Card Studios, a creative development firm with offices in Los Angeles and Seattle. “It was a great working experience,” notes Will Lanni, principal for Red Card. “With an animated series like this, it’s crucial that the visual elements are developed hand in hand with the written content. We were fortunate to be involved with Scott, Ed, Karen, and the rest of the Evangelism Team from the very beginning, so that we could participate not only in shaping the overall visual style, but also in setting the tone of the series.”

“We chose Red Card because they had an instant understanding of how we wanted to present our product,” says Microsoft's Scott Burmester, Project Manager of the Office 2007 Evangelism Team. “With Office Noir, we wanted to do something hip and different—something that would communicate our product messaging but, also, be entertaining and engaging. Red Card’s creative team helped us achieve all these goals and the resulting Office Noir campaign has been wildly successful.”

The Office Noir series has indeed generated quite a buzz around Microsoft. It spawned a contest whose grand prize was an opportunity to appear in a future episode, and it inspired the production of a printed comic book, based on Episodes I and II, which was given away at Office promotional events and technology conferences. The current episodes and all future episodes can be seen on Microsoft’s Channel 9 on MSDN (http://channel9.msdn.com).

About Red Card Studios

Red Card Studios is an all-inclusive creative development firm. Since it was founded in 2001, Red Card’s expert team has continued to deliver comprehensive interactive and design solutions to large and small companies worldwide. For more information, visit www.redcardstudios.com

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