Steve Carell’s Michael Scott had become the nation’s favourite dim-witted boss. A goodbye on TV is a one-way farewell from him to the rest of the country, but one last email to him is a way for people to find personal closure with the character and find satisfaction with its conclusion.

With NBC, we created a precise mock-up of what Michael Scott’s new Yahoo! Mail platform would look like. With the assistance of award-winning writers from The Office, we developed emails from Michael and his former co-workers, which, in essence, created a different ending to the story arc after Michael left the show.

The best part? Over the course of the summer, fans were able to write messages to Michael as part of the new Yahoo! Mail interface.

Consumers flooded Michael Scott’s Yahoo! inbox, prompting NBC to keep the program alive long past the planned end date. Yahoo! saw a clear and direct rise in attitudinal results, with more than 66 percent of consumers likely to recommend the new Yahoo! Mail—much higher than the average 55%. The NBC initiative was the centrepiece of a campaign that drove more than 100 million switches to the new Yahoo! Mail. More than 5,300 emails were sent to Michael Scott. We generated more than 416,000 unique visitors, 3.8 million page views and thousands of Facebook Likes.