June 3rd, 2009
No Apple-like attack ads for Microsoft's big-bucks Bing campaign
On June 3, Microsoft kicked off its multi-million-dollar ad campaign designed to promote its rebranded Bing search engine.
There are no “Laptop Hunter” type ads — via which Microsoft would directly target and call out Google the way it has been doing on the PC front with Apple — in Bing’s future, company officials said. Instead, Microsoft is planning to focus its messaging around Bing as a “decision engine,” rather than a “search engine.”
Microsoft is pulling out all the stops to get users used to the new Bing brand. Danielle Tiedt, General Manager of Marketing for Microsoft’s Online Audience Business, wouldn’t confirm that the company is spending the rumored figure of $100 million to market and promote Bing, but did not that the campaign is a long and serious one, with TV, Web and paid placement components that will roll out over the course of three years. Ad agency JWT is developing the TV ads, Razorfish is doing the online ads and Efficient Frontier is in charge of the search-engine-marketing component of the campaign, Tiedt said.
“Now, Google is the verb. It’s on TV shows — that just happens and Google doesn’t have to pay for placement,” Tiedt said. To help seed Bing, Microsoft is working with new partners like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and various radio shows, she said.
Microsoft is starting the campaign this week with a series of ads that it hopes will surface “the latent dissatisfaction” that many users are experiencing when they search. Microsoft then plans to roll out a series of ads that will focus on the theme of the “search overload syndrome” by likening the vague and often unrelated answers that search engines currently yield to the kinds of answers people typically get when asking family members specific questions. In July, Microsoft will begin to air more product-specific segments focusing on Bing Travel, Bing Shopping, Bing Health and other specific vertical segments. Throughout, Microsoft will invest heavily in search-engine marketing, Tiedt said.
Microsoft also is trying to build consumer buzz around Bing by creating more of a “fan base” for the product. The company is developing a Facebook page for the engine, launching a “tweet and decide” Twitter campaign and building a community program via which members can submit photos for consideration for the day’s Bing.com home page design, which will be voted on by the community.
One thing Microsoft won’t be doing when marketing Bing is attacking the No. 1 or 2 competitors in the market (Google and Yahoo), she said.
“We are attacking the search problem,” Tiedt said. “But given most people today are using Google, (the campaign) is indirectly against Google.”
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