While cardboard might not necessarily be the most hi-tech material available at the moment, it has a lot of use, such as building boxes, and in some instances forming the frame of a virtual reality headset which is what Google debuted a couple of months ago. Perhaps Microsoft is taking a page from Google’s playbook because it seems that over in Australia, Microsoft has started sending out cardboard versions of the Surface Pro 3 in an attempt at marketing the device to various schools in the country.
According to a report from The Verge, it seems that the cardboard version of the Surface Pro 3 is actually functional. Granted it probably won’t let you type up documents, watch movies, or surf the web, but it does come with functional electronic components. For example it has a working display which lights up to highlight some of the hardware specs of the actual Surface Pro 3 tablet.
It even comes with a mini USB port which is used to charge the mini display, thus turning it from an art class project to a novel use of technology. Now this isn’t the first time that companies have used similar marketing tactics to draw attention to themselves. For example Motorola launched an offline Moto Maker in Wired’s magazine, and Entertainment Weekly actually had an Android phone embedded in the pages of their magazine.
Either way it’s a pretty clever marketing stunt by Microsoft and we have to wonder if Microsoft will be taking that idea to other parts of the world, or if this marketing tactic is limited to Australia.
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