Microsoft Surface x Seahawks | Data-Driven Sponsored Content
Client/Employer: Microsoft Surface & Seattle Seahawks
As the Seahawks’ digital strategy lead, I partnered with Microsoft Surface and our Corporate Partnerships team to address an underperforming sponsored content series. Using a custom-built performance dashboard, we analyzed campaign effectiveness and used data—not opinion—to guide the conversation around optimization. The result was a seamless transition to a high-performing content franchise that met Microsoft’s brand integration requirements while significantly improving fan engagement. The outcome was a measurable win for the partner, the team, and the audience.
Problem: Microsoft Surface wanted sponsored content that visibly featured the Surface device. At the time, we were producing a series called Film Session, where a media personality used the Surface to break down plays. While Microsoft was satisfied with the series, the content consistently underperformed from an engagement standpoint—and we knew we could do better. The challenge was not only proving that insight in a way that was objective, transparent, and actionable, but also providing a solution which all parties could agree on.
Strategy: To move away from underperforming content, we needed to make the case with data—not just opinion. We built a cross-platform performance dashboard that tracked every Seahawks content series throughout the year. Each row represented a different feature or campaign, and each column showed a key performance metric, averaged to reflect long-term trends instead of one-off spikes. This allowed us to compare all content features side-by-side and confidently identify which were driving results—and which weren’t.
Execution:
Using this dashboard, we confirmed that Film Session was underperforming across multiple KPIs.
We presented this data to Microsoft Surface alongside a new proposal: integrating their brand into Question of the Day, one of our top-performing series which featured fun, topical questions posed to players. The Surface integration came in the form of a quick visual—showing players reading the question off the device before responding.
This shift allowed us to preserve the entertainment value fans loved while still meeting Microsoft’s product visibility requirement.
Content was rolled out across social channels, tailored for each platform.
Results: The results spoke for themselves. In 2024, Question of the Day presented by Microsoft Surface generated:
A 124% increase in average impressions per post compared to Film Session posts in 2023
A 6x increase in total engagements for the campaign as a whole compared to 2023
A single Question of the Day post received as much engagement as the entire Film Session campaign in 2023