After merely splitting U.S. market share with its Yahoo! search engine partner, Microsoft’s Bing came to its own decision. It’s “splitsville” for “Bing, The Decision Engine,“ and full-speed ahead with a more active, verb-oriented approach (an interesting Facebook paralell) that Microsoft launched with a different kind of television spot during the NFC championship football game on Sunday.
“Bing Is for Doing,” a campaign created by Publicis Groupe’s Razorfish agency (an ad group it used to own), features winter-sports athletes. The first spot tells the story of American snowboarder Kevin Pearce, whose tragic accident quashed his Olympic hopes through a narrative of Bing searches.
Ad Age reported in September that Bing was ready to kill the “Decision Engine” tagline created by former agency JWT and used since the relaunch of Microsoft search in 2009.
Bing director Lisa Gurry introduced a new ad campaign for Bing in a blog post Friday. The new campaign highlights “people doing interesting things. Bing has traditionally highlighted the decisions people make and now, with this new campaign, Bing will illustrate how decisions enable people to go beyond searching to doing.”
According to Gurry, the message to be delivered is that Bing not only pulls up information but helps people “get things done right on Bing.com” — including making dinner reservations or sharing links with Facebook friends.
“So whether you’re on your PC or on your phone, Bing has features designed not just to connect you to the information you are looking for, but also to help you get things done right on Bing.com. From making dinner reservations to sharing a link with one of your Facebook friends, it can all happen within Bing. With Bing, you simply get results you can trust that will get you quickly from searching to doing. Bing is for doing.
While Bing has improved its market share in the U.S. since its launch, so has search leader Google. Analysts contend that Microsoft’s 15.1% share compared to Google’s 65.9% has come at expense of Yahoo (14.1%), a Bing partner, whose position as the No. 2 U.S. provider was surpassed by Bing last month.
Here’s a look at the premiere video spot of the new “Bing Is For Doing” campaign. [24×7]
