Who has time for that, right? Well you should make time. Just as soon as you’re done reading this, stay right where you are, and see what results you get when you type your name into Bing.com.
When a company’s name is substituted for the action made while using the product, or in some cases another product - that is called brandverbing. (i.e. When you’re done Xeroxing that Kleenex®, I need you to Fedex® it over to Velcro®, while I finish my Coke® and Google® Boy George to see if he took part in Band-Aid®.) All of these trademarked words are used in a general manner often enough that they run the risk of losing their intellectual property rights of their trademarks. Some already have. We have taken Xerox, FedEx and Google one step further by replacing verbs with these words.
People have been Googling themselves for years, but now my TV tells me it is time to Bing. I gave Bing a shot or two, but didn’t see much of a reason to switch my service as it were, so I kept Googling. Now I think it is time to do an in-depth taste test of the two.
First I’d like to note I’m a little bias against Microsoft. I still like to think that during their last campaign battle with Mac, that Mac won - and that Mac should cool it already. They bested the giant monster for the time being, now move on. In this battle, Google and Microsoft are both giants. Still I find myself defending Google in the news and siding with it more often than Microsoft.
That being said, the Bing campaign is beautifully done. It doesn’t want to mention any names, but it recognizes our frustration with search engines and offers a solution at Bing.com. The ads are clever and professional and funny enough not to be irritating. The commercial caught my attention the first time I saw it, although I had to watch it a second time to really grasp it. They recognize that we “Google” and again without any stone throwing, offer us a chance to “Bing and decide” and prevent search overload. My favorite spots of the campaign are Bing Search Overload: Pregnant and the Getting You What You Want Faster spot during a Daily Show episode.
The ads compelled me to check it out for myself. The site however, did not keep my attention. I tried a few searches and decided this doesn’t really offer me anything new. Yes there are pretty pictures and some fun facts to digest, but I think those are only there so I remember what site I was using when I got the same results as Googling.
It wasn’t until I was talking to a colleague about my distaste for the worthless, search results on Google that no one ever clicks on and are only paid for because “We can’t allow our competition to have that space all to themselves”, that I thought to myself I should give Bing a more thorough investigation. I didn’t notice much of a difference the last time I searched for something, so this time I searched for something I knew more about - me.
Bing came out strong. 5 of the 10 results posted on the first page were a direct hit. The first 4 results were all about me even though one was a duplicate result. It wasn’t until page 3 that I found result number 6 which was a race result from 2002, where my father Harry Acosta had also run, so double threat.
Google fell short of that. On the first 3 pages, 21 of 30 results pointed to a Harry Acosta, but only two pointed to me. On the first page, just one result for me and it was an outdated page of a website I had revamped months ago. I was able to make a note of it for the next person who may google me, which could be any minute now. All in all, pretty lousy results especially if the information I uncovered on one of the results is true. WhitePages.com informed me that “There are 13 unique ‘Harry Acosta’ full names in the United States”. We could start a baseball team! With that you’d think I’d be all over these pages. What was all over these pages? Paid search results and nine results for Harry Potter. The search overload ads were right. Harry Acosta provided more results for Harry Potter than for me.
Now what about those paid search results? On Bing, there were paid search results but they hadn’t yet hidden them amongst the rest of the real results like some sites have done. Google even had paid results show up for other search engines like Ask.com when I Googled Bing. I’m sure Bing is on track to catch up.
My results are best summarized thusly - Binging Bing:
“Bing is a search engine that finds and organizes the answers you need so you can make faster, more informed decisions.”
Googling Google Result:
“Google. Advanced Search · Preferences · Language Tools · Advertising Programs - Business Solutions - About Google. ©2009 - Privacy.”
I think Bing wins with their marketing campaign. It did it’s job and I tried it out. For the time being they have a better approach to finding things online too. Searching for images had a nice feel with a few more options as well. Their maps didn’t take you right to my doormat, but zoomed in just enough for me to recognize that it was taken in spring ‘08.
From a marketer’s standpoint, I hope Bing takes off. From the consumer’s point of view it is not Web 3.0. The difference between the two is not great enough for people to switch over. Fortunately for Microsoft, most people will not need to. As a matter of fact, people with Internet Explorer will have to actively change back from Bing as their default search engine to Google.
Time will tell what we can expect. Who knows? Maybe we’ll be Asking ourselves in the future.
Marketing with Virtue,
Harry Acosta
Sole Proprietor
Sylph, Llc.
sylph@woway.com
sylphmarketing.com
