Bing May Ax Its 'Decision Engine' Positioning

Hooks Up With Razorfish and Co Collective to Market Search Engine

Microsoft is in the trenches evaluating brand positioning for its search engine, Bing, with some very familiar faces: Ty Montague and Rosemarie Ryan, now with Co Collective, and an agency it used to own: Razorfish

People familiar with the matter say that Microsoft is doing a deep-dive look at where it wants to take the Bing brand, and that labor won't bear fruit until next year. What's up for debate? Whether to stick with positioning Bing not as a search engine, but as a decision engine.

Microsoft launched Bing with "Decision Engine" ads from Mr. Montague and Ms. Ryan's former agency JWT, but has been marketing the search engine under "Bing and Decide" for at least six months. There's no plan to move away from "Bing and Decide," according to the company.

Co's Mr. Montague was chief creative at JWT when that agency came up with the launch campaign "Decision Engine" back when Bing first launched in 2009. Since then, he left JWT to start the independent shop with Ms. Ryan. The new relationship has sprung up after the pair's one-year non-compete period with WPP expired. The so-called brand innovation studio has grown to about 20 people.

Razorfish is also said to be involved; Microsoft sold the mammoth digital agency sold to ad-holding company Publicis Groupe in 2009. The agency has continued to work with Microsoft on such projects as the ill-fated Kin phone.

Bing has, more or less, steadily gained market share in the U.S. since its launch, but that's flattened out this year, according to ComScore data. However, since Bing's launch, search leader Google has only continued to grow its hold in the U.S. While Microsoft's search share has grown too -- with 14.4% compared to Google's 65.1% in July per ComScore -- it looks to be at the expense of Yahoo, a Bing partner, whose position as the No. 2 U.S. provider continues to slip over the last few years.

SWIZZ BEATZ :: BING COMMERCIAL

JAY-Z BING DECODED MARKETING CAMPAIGN STRATEGY

The global influence Jay-Z has had on culture, commerce, music and beyond is really fucking amazing.

Droga 5's 'Decode Jay-Z' for Bing Wins Again, This Time the Integrated Grand Prix

Not Top Prize for Titanium, but Jury Awards Three Lions in the Category

By the time the integrated/titanium category rolls around at the end of the week, the winners' list -- topped by Grand Prix winner "Decode Jay-Z With Bing" by Droga 5 in New York -- is a pretty familiar lineup of the greatest hits from earlier contests. "Decode Jay-Z" won awards throughout the week, including the outdoor Grand Prix and a direct Gold, and picked up a titanium Lion as well as the integrated Grand Prix.


There was also a mandatory appearance by Procter & Gamble's Old Spice work by Wieden & Kennedy and Google's Chrome browser, the companies that are likely to be the two most-awarded marketers at this year's Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. They won a Gold and a Bronze integrated Lion, respectively.

What it is: "We loved its bravery, its boldness, its innovation," said Jury President Bob Scarpelli, chairman of DDB Worldwide. "It's immersive. It's interactive. It's creating conversations with customers. It gave millions a reason to use Bing. They put every page of [Jay-Z's new autobiography] out in the world every day for a month in 13 major cities in the world. Fans could walk through J-Z's life."

Another reason why it won: Fernanda Romano, global creative director, digital and experiential at Euro RSCG, put it best: "I don't think anyone in the room says they're going to 'Bing' anything. You say 'Google.' So Bing has a massive problem. In this case, Bing didn't advertise itself. Bing gave people a user demo and proved it's a good product. Expose people to it, and then they'll tell each other about it." Jay-Z's Facebook followers grew by 1 million and his book was an instant best-seller, but the key number for Bing was the 11.7% increase in visits to Bing in a month.

The jury: Led by Mr. Scarpelli, this 10-person jury is the festival's smallest. Four of the judges simply appear as "global" on the jury list, without a country designation. Another, Linus Karlsson, is a Swede who is chairman and chief creative officer of both the New York and London offices of McCann Erickson, so he is listed as being from both countries.

Controversy or clear winner? Entries in this contest are considered for both integrated and titanium awards. Titanium is reserved for what the festival calls "breakthrough ideas" and this year the jury made the call to skip a titanium Grand Prix.

Total number of Lions awarded: After watching 480 case videos, the jury shortlisted 32 and picked 16 winners. Three titanium Lions were awarded. In the integrated category, the jury gave a Grand Prix, three Gold Lions, six Silver Lions and seven Bronze Lions.

Who else did well? Romania's "American Rom" campaign by BV McCann that kicked off the week with direct and promo Grand Prix trophies was back with a titanium Lion and an integrated Gold, and Nike's "Write the Future" also picked up an integrated Gold award.

What they didn't like: "The videos are too long," complained Paul Lavoie, a judge and chairman of Taxi. "I suggested to [festival Chair Terry] Savage that whatever the [entry] fee is -- I think it's about 1,200 euro [about $1,700] -- it should be 1,200 euro per 30 seconds of video. We'd get the elevator pitch faster."

That pricing model seems unlikely. It's true integrated/titanium is the only category that allows videos to be a maximum of three minutes, rather than the two-minute limit elsewhere, but agencies are packing an entire integrated campaign into 180 seconds.

What you should do next year: "It feels like the digital transformation of the industry is complete," said Iain Tait, a judge and global interactive executive creative director of Wieden & Kennedy. Each entry had a deep point of interactivity, not just a video on YouTube, he said. "It's the first year we've seen that." But, he cautioned: "Every entry talks about Facebook and Twitter. People need to calm down about that, and understand that's a natural thing. If you do something good, people will talk about it. So you can leave that bit out."

The Bing-Facebook Alliance: Six Things You (& Google) Should Know (via Fast Company)

It’s not too audacious to say that the new Bing search features that Microsoft and Facebook unveiled today are going to upend the search business.

Until now, search algorithms have used machine learning and artificial intelligence to predict which of the billions of pages out on the Internet might be most salient to your search. Now, at least on Bing, they’re going to have access to something even more precious: the knowledge of who your friends are and what they like.

Among the features Bing is rolling out to users in the coming days is a module called “Liked Results” to its search results. Looking for information on that new Tom Cruise movie? On Google, your search engine would serve up the relevant pages it has calculated are the most popular. On Bing, as of now, it serves up the regular Google-style results and a module that shows you pages your friends have liked — including, for example, movie reviews. You no longer have to do the work of trolling through search results to figure out which of the pages might tell you whether the movie’s a hit or a bomb. Trust your friend Sara’s taste? Click on the page she Liked.

So what does this all mean? Here are a few takeaways:

1. Search just reached an inflection point. Google’s great innovation was to figure out how to deliver the most relevant search results, based on the assumption that a webpage that had a large number of other pages linking to it would be more interesting than one with fewer links. Google has built its search algorithms by continuing to troll large sets of data for other attributes that indicate relevance. Now, however, Bing can deliver results based on what your trusted sources of information—your friends and acquaintances—think. This is a giant leap forward. Among other things, it means that…

2. Companies have to focus on creating great customer experiences. Because when their customers go searching online—for a movie, a camera, a travel destination—their friends’ recommendations are going to be front and center. Launched a store that no one “Liked?” you’re not going to show up in the search results.

3. Search is going to look a lot different. Forget the list of blue links. As Qi Lu, the engineering lead for the new changes (and president of Microfsoft’s Online Services Group), said, once you introduce a social dimension to search results, you could actually start representing search results—visually—in new ways. He didn’t say what those might look like, but be prepared to see them soon, because…

4. We’re going to be seeing even more social elements introduced into Bing’s search results. And soon. Both Microsoft and Facebook said that today’s new features were just the beginning. It only took them two months to gin up the ones they released today. Which means more are going to be coming down the pike in the months to come. Which means…

5. Google may have to go back to the drawing board. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg didn’t say they were shutting the search giant out. In fact, he said that, ultimately, the company would like to work with all players in search. But for now, it appears he’s working solely with Microsoft.

6. You must master your Facebook privacy settings. Mindful of earlier criticism of Facebook’s handling of privacy issues, both Microsoft and Facebook went out of their way today to stress that users will retain control over what Facebook shares with Bing. The flip side is that users actually have to exercise the control that Bing and Facebook give them. Learn more about how to turn Facebook on and off in Bing here and about privacy settings here and here (you have to be logged into Facebook for those last two).

Source: http://www.those-people.com/

JAY-Z UNVEILING HIS NEW MEMOIR: DECODED

Jay-Z made an appearance last night at the Delano South Beach hotel in Miami to promote his memoir Decoded, which will be released November 16. At the event, he unveiled a page from the book as part of an online scavenger hunt where participants are competing for the chance to party with Jay and Coldplay on NYE in Las Vegas. You can join the hunt and locate these pages using the Bing.com/Jay-Z site.

According to David Droga, the Droga5 creative director who oversaw the New York campaign, “While about half of the pages will be displayed in traditional outdoor advertising like billboards, the rest will be offbeat, printed in one instance on the bottom of a hotel swimming pool (as in video above), in another on the lining of jackets in a store display window, and in another on the felt of pool tables in a pool hall.”

The cover of Decoded features one of Andy Warhol‘s 1984 Rorschach paintings and the 336-page book breaks down 36 songs while it offers an intimate look at Jay-Z’s songwriting process.

Microsoft Friends Facebook for More Social Search

Search Alliance to Bring Friends' Opinions, Preferences Into Bing Search Results


NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Facebook has deepened its relationship with Microsoft with a search partnership that will incorporate your social connections' opinions and preferences into Bing search results.


Using Facebook's "Instant Personalization" system, Bing results now recognize a searcher's friends and pull in publicly available information such as "likes" and posted links. Searches for a restaurant or a movie, for example, could include recommendations, "likes" or links from friends, whose profile pictures and names will appear. These "social results" are initially appearing in a separate module on the page but soon will be grouped with the main search results.

Conscious of past dust-ups over privacy, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg made it clear during an announcement at Microsoft's Mountain View, Calif., campus that Bing will only get information that's been made publicly available by users, who will have the ability to disable Bing in their privacy settings. Bing will ask its users in a pop-up window if they'd like to connect Facebook to Bing.

The move will help Bing further differentiate itself from Google and extend Facebook's social graph into search results. "We are not about the blue links anymore," said Microsoft Senior VP Yusuf Mehdi, on hand with Online Services President Qi Lu. "We are about visual search, where the whole concept of links go away."

The deal also deepens Facebook's relationship with Microsoft, which sold display ads on Facebook and made an investment in the company. And while Mr. Zuckerberg said Facebook would work with multiple players in social search, he explained why he started with Microsoft instead of Google, Facebook's neighbor in Silicon Valley.

"The thing that makes Microsoft the ideal partner for us is they really are the underdog," Mr. Zuckerberg said. "The are incentivized to go out and innovate. When you are the incumbent there is a balance between preserving what you have and trying to innovate."

Here's the press conference and demo, recorded earlier:

Watch live streaming video from facebookinnovations at livestream.com

BLACK EYE PEAS X MICROSOFT = A GLOBAL EXPERIENCE

The Black Eyed Peas tried to make "Bing Bing" a catchphrase like "bling bling" at a private concert held for Microsoft employees Friday in Atlanta at the Microsoft Global Experience conference.

Bing is the search engine Microsoft launched last year to compete with dominant player Google. To try to replace the generic use of "Google" as a verb, Chief Executive Steve Ballmer has been inserting the verb "Bing" into many of his speeches.

The pop band Black Eyed Peas are now trying, too, at least at this corporate event, which looks like more fun than the MySpace party in the movie "Funny People" with James Taylor and Adam Sandler.

At the Microsoft conference, Will.i.am calls out the audience "as my Bing Bingers." (It's also possible he said "my big Bingers.")

"This is the future of search, the Bing Bings," he says to Fergie. "So, when I say 'Bing Bing,' you know what 'Bing Bing' means? If I have a ball or a projectile, I hit it and it continues to ricochet everywhere, that’s bing bing bing bing bing bing bing bing bing bing… Eventually it takes ‘em all out. That’s what 'Bing Bing' means." And then they start singing "I Gotta Feeling."

A heads up — this video has a few expletives in it. To catch the "bing bing" segment, fast forward to the 5:28 mark. It looks like this video was made by someone who works for Microsoft in the Netherlands.

SEATTLE STORM ANNOUNCES MARQUEE PARTNERSHIP WITH BING

April 21, 2010: In what could be the most impactful marketing deal in recent U.S. sports history, the WNBA has signed a multi-year pact with Microsoft that includes putting the Bing search engine logo on the jersey front of the Seattle Storm. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Although LifeLock with the Phoenix Mercury and Farmers Insurance with the Los Angeles Sparks already have logos on WNBA team jersey fronts, the deal with the Seattle-based company that had $58 billion in revenue in 2009 will by far have more repercussions on the future of the WNBA and future alliances in other pro sports. Concurrently, Microsoft will use the alliance to continue its efforts to cut into search engine territory controlled by rival Google.

"It was critically important that we not only secure a marquee partner but secure a marquee partner that aligned with both our values and our business objectives. Bing absolutely fits those criteria," Storm CEO Karen Bryant said on StormBasketball.com. "It's a real indicator of the health of the business, a real reflection of Microsoft's commitment to our community and the beginning of what I know will be a long and very productive partnership. To have a company the caliber of Bing make a strategic decision to invest in a local, independently owned WNBA franchise is a significant milestone."

More such WNBA jersey deals are expected although it was not indicated by the WNBA if that would happen by the time the 2010 WNBA season begins in May. As with the other WNBA deals, the logo of team uniform supplier adidas and the team's own logo will remain on the jersey front, although much smaller than the Bing logo.

Contributed by Matthew "The Mayor" Verden