Worst of the Week: Bing from Microsoft

Recently, we’ve picked on a handful of smaller, local marketers for our Worst of the Week.  Today, we want to demonstrate how even the biggest of the bigs in marketing can do stupid things to undermine their own marketing efforts.  Prepare to gouge your eyeballs out after this one!

One-hundred million dollars!  That’s how much Microsoft is reportedly spending to promote their new search engine – Bing.  To put that in perspective, industry experts say Google spends about $25 million in advertising last year – of which almost half was on recruitment advertising.  To be honest, Microsoft has done a nice job of trying to differentiate Bing from Google, Yahoo and others by marketing it as a “decision engine.”  Their Search Overload Syndrome campaign is actually pretty good (see a couple of the handful of spots here and here).

So then, how do you explain this?

This is Microsoft’s attempt at being a “hip marketer” and using one of the newest trends in marketing – crowdsourcing.  Crowdsourcing is when you let your customers and others get involved with your brand by helping you create some of the marketing.  Sometimes it works (like in the Doritos Super Bowl campaign where they played this winning spot).  Sometimes it doesn’t.

Does Microsoft really want their shiny new “Bing” to be associated with a pajama-bottom wearing?  Obviously, the answer is “yes” because they’re the ones that have pushed this campaign out and set the criteria for the winner.

My guess is the folks at JWT – the ad agency Microsoft recently hired to handle the Bing launch – is cringing – both about the fact that a campaign like this can quickly undermine the good work they’ve done – and because they don’t want potential clients to think they had anything to do with this.  Can’t say that I’d blame them!

The bottom line is, if you’re going to spend a hundred million dollars on a carefully crafted, strategically planned marketing campaign to launch a brand new product into the consumer marketplace, don’t be stupid.

Congrats Microsoft, you’re our Worst of the Week!

Author:  Tom Flynn III

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Tagged as: bing, bing advertising, bing search engine, bing spots, crowdsourcing, doritos, doritos super bowl ad, JWT, Microsoft, search overload syndrome