Opinion

Bing – official search engine of the dark side

It would seem that with Halloween approaching, Bing is the vampire’s search engine of choice.

 

And if you look carefully, you’ll spot a Sydney link to this US-based Bing ad.

Meanwhile, the Australian ads for Bing below are a few weeks old now, but they’ve just gone up on the Bing YouTube channel, which is a good excuse to give them an airing.  

The challenge, of course, is that Bing needs to position itself as an alternative to Google, although much of the basic service is the same.

Bing was launched five months ago, but at the time NineMSN boss Joe Pollard said that the main marketing push would follow later, particularly as other services rolled out.

Bing is Microsoft’s baby. In Australia, NineMSN is a joint venture between PBL and Microsoft, meaning Bing can get airtime on Nine and space in ACP magazines.

The approach from the agency – Moon – has been to focus on showcasing aspects of the service that differ from Google – particularly in video and image search. Although different from the brand-led approach taken by Bing in the US, it’s not a bad strategy.

The Aussie ads include one focused on finding good things:

 

Another focuses on the ability to see previews while searching video:

 

Another promotes Bing’s offering up of other search terms that might be related:

Another highlights the infinite scroll of Bing’s image search:

Another showcases the results preview function when the user hovers over a search option:

As I mentioned, the ads’ concentration on directly showcasing attributes of the service are in contrast to ads in the US, which have been far more brand focused:

 

Tim Burrowes

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