Innovation Marketing: BING was its name O

Today I watched a video on YouTube called, ‘Mad Ave Blues’.  A tad bit on the long side, but worth every minute as it touches on the current state of the advertising industry.

 [Thanks to Dave Knox at the blog 'Hard Knox Life' for sharing]

About 6 weeks ago I wrote a post entitled, ‘Is Advertising Dead’.  It takes a look at how traditional advertising is changing. The 9 inch axiom in the post was that ‘advertising only works when it has the ability to engage.  It must be targeted, relevant and not seen as an intrusion’.  

Enter BING  

Microsoft is in the process of launching its ‘decision engine’ called BING.  I just saw the first spot tonight during the NBA Finals [high marks, very clever].  Here is another spot called ‘Hawaii’.

It’s estimated that the folks from Redmond, WA are planning to spend between $80 and $100 million in advertising to launch BING.  Here is a great article from The New York Times that discusses the effort.  Here are a few notable excerpts:

“The key will be whether we deliver a product and connect with people emotionally in the advertising,” said Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president for the online services division of Microsoft. To achieve the second point, “you have to do something a little bit more surprising,” he added.

As a seller of technology products and services, Microsoft “is in a highly competitive space,” said Ben Silverman, co-chairman at the NBC Entertainment unit of NBC Universal in Los Angeles, so it needs “innovation marketing” to break through the clutter.

I have to admit that I really like what I’m seeing so far from Microsoft.  Maybe part of it is that I was so underwhelmed with the spots from the Jerry Seinfeld / Bill Gates Vista campaign.

Here are the 3 things we can learn from BING:

1.  Positioning 101 – Bing doesn’t bill itself as a search engine, it classifies itself as a ‘decision engine’.  Smart move.  Google corners the market in search.  Bing would have be a far superior product to Google in order to convert the faithful.  Much smarter to differentiate yourself and align yourself with the desired end result of search (finding information that aids in making a decision).

2. Thinking ‘beyond the 30 second spot’ – Microsoft and JWT have teamed up with NBC Universal and MTV.  The media buy includes brand integration into a new series ‘The Philanthropist’, sponsorship of shows whereby BING subsidizes 2.5 minutes of commercials for a 30 second ‘Fast Forward’ spot, and contests on the ‘Late Show with Jimmy Fallon’.  I like the non-traditional approach.

3. Utilize an event / stunt to launch the brand – On Monday, June 8th at 8 p.m. EST Bing is hosting a special one hour event on HULU.  The faux show is called the Bing-a-thon. Those Hulu users who watch the show will receive a reward: the ability to watch TV shows or movies on hulu.com without commercial interruptions.  Kudos to the folks at CAA for bringing this launch on HULU to life and figuring a way that incentivizes viewers to tune in.  

Today’s Lagniappe [a little something extra] a funny vid and some trivia about Bing Crosby

Funny Vid:  What if you took the client / vendor relationship and applied it to real life situations?  This video is funny, but for those of us who live in this world it’s more funny peculiar than funny ha ha.

[Thanks to Beth Harte at the blog 'Harte of Marketing' for sharing]

Trivia: What is Bing Crosby’s real first name and more obscurely what were his last words? (The answers are in the first comment)

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