Microsoft’s Big Bing: Story of a celeb

Microsoft had announced a massive ad campaign for its search engine Bing - more than thrice of what Google spends on its publicity.  In line with its ad efforts to popularize Bing as bada bing, Bing Crosby or Stanley Bing, Microsoft would be buying prominent placement for bing.com in popular online video hub Hulu and the television shows. This is Microsoft’s latest assault against the search engine ace Google, after tasting lemon on all its previous attempts. This time Microsoft’s seems all set to blow the horn, let’s see how.

Designed by JWT unit of WPP to compliment an elaborate traditional campaign, the campaign would be what they call branded entertainment. This is evidently an attempt to blend advertising for Bing into content.

According to senior vice president for the online services division of Microsoft in Redmond, Yusuf Mehdi this is one of toughest marketing as well as product challenge for Microsoft. He added, that it would take multiple steps to real the goal.

Two Goals

Mehdi clearly defines that there are two objectives enclosing the Bing campaign

Firstly, to create a fan base and start growing the share. Secondly, the most important fact is that every other search-engine service has lost its market share in the last five years except for the leader, that is Google.

The adverting campaign could be designed to highlight a product and connect with the people emotionally at the same time. Where as to end Google’s monopoly in searh engine market, Microsoft needs to generate innovative features that would take people by surprise.

Bing Campaign

Let’s take a plunge into the details of the campaign

Bing’s program-style commercial on Hulu

First in the line is program-style commercial on Hulu, scheduled for 8 p.m. (Eastern time) on Monday. This would be an hourlong sales pitch, first of its kind on Hulu. It would be styled in a telethon and carries a title Bing-a-thong. This has been developed by the Creative Artists Agency in Los Angeles for Bing. The show would be casting Jason Sudeikis of Saturday Night Live, Olivia Munn of the G4 cable channel and the comedian Fred Willard.

The Hulu users watching the Bing-a-thon will receive a reward. The winners will be able to watch TV shows or movies on hulu.com without any commercial breaks. Hulu is one of the top five popular sites for online video in US.

This will be followed by integrations of Bing into shows on networks that are part of NBC Universal as well as on cable channels that are units of the MTV Networks division of Viacom.

Bing in Quiz show

There will be segment on Late Show that will present Mr.Fallon as a quiz master. In this the contestants will be asked use bing.com to search for answers to question in the categories like travel, health and shopping.

Bing in The Philanthropist

In one of the massively popular shows, The Philanthropist where James Purefoy plays a globetrotting, the Bing Maps would be establish the location of characters and other characters will use bing.com to seek information.

The viewers will be prompted in the commercial breaks begin to visit bing.com to learn more about subjects discussed during  The Philanthropist. It is scheduled to run for eight episodes, or what you can call a summer maxi-series.

Bing Sponsorship deal with MTV

There’s a sponsorship deal with MTV Networks scheduled to start on Thursday in The Daily Show With Jon Stewart on Comedy Central. It will continue through June 17 on the following

• Top 20 Countdown on CMT
• The George Lopez Show on Nick at Nite
• Charm School” on VH1
• Real World — Road Rules Challenge Duel II Reunion Special

all on MTV.

Bing Spot on MTV

Bing spot is a really interesting part of the story. JWT created this extremely exciting stuff for MTV Networks, called Fast Forward for Bing spot. It appears as if you are using the fast-forward feature on DVR or VCR to slip through the 2 1/2 minutes of commercials in 30 seconds. The spot is intended to declare Bing’s message that reads

getting what you want,

Well, this is great way out of traditional TV advertising that would benefit both consumers as well as the sponsors.

From what it pops out from the entire story, the brand entertainment would be more of brand-hype to the consumers and not much of  entertainment.  That’s seems evident from what Eric Hadley, general manager of worldwide marketing for search and MSN at Microsoft, announced that the goal will be to get the consumers to say Oh wow and not That’s it.