The strangest Microsoft video ever?
The jingle competition held recently by Microsoft must be tattooed to the tips of your tongues.
For those who might have been attending a serious yoga retreat at the time, a man called Jonathan Mann won $500 for a ditty that some described using a word that rhymes with ditty.
It seemed to me to be rather good business at the time. Microsoft spent very little money and received much publicity. However, some new footage of the Bing jingle being performed has struck me in the eyes and buried itself in my worried parts.
You see, it features many, many children from the Keith Valley Middle School in the non-Amish region of Pennsylvania singing the jingle, dancing to the jingle and wearing uniform T-shirts imported from the Left Coast.
I know I should find this charming. I know that I should consider this an educational initiative that engaged a bunch of kids and prevented them from spending hours listening to overstressed, underpaid teachers who dream of lottery wins and Barbadian beaches.
So why is my inner Netflix suddenly bringing to my attention footage of Romanian schoolchildren circa 1963? Why is my inner screen projecting a 1959 appearance by Nikita Khruschev at one of outer Moscow's fine collective farms?
Why do I find this Bing footage slightly peculiar? Please help me. Does my Eastern European heritage make me overly sensitive to this kind of thing? Do your children pay homage to Microsoft by singing the Bing jingle while waving their arms around at school too?
Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. 
It reminds me of the recent videos of school children singing the praises of Chairman Obama.
There are many people who think Obama is developing a cult of personality like Mao and others. That's why there was a major reaction again initial documents asking what students can do for Obama (rather than for America) from the Dept of Educ, and the videos of school singing praises to Obama as if he were Mao.
What would really make me sleep better at night is an end to the Obama spin on everything. Bush was a liar and scoundrel, Obama is no better. Certainly he is nothing to sing about. Better to sing about Bing.
A good start would be not bringing Obama up in threads that have absolutely nothing to do with him or politics.
Yeah weird to us but kids like anything silly like this.
MS does a Solja Boy.
someone fire MS's marketing team.
Great way to hook the masses on mindlessly following the word of Redmond, because there is no other view.
And if the school got any money from doing this instead of pimping candy, fruit or Christmas cards, then bravo.
Just saying, put it in perspective to what else they are exposed to and asked to do.
The problem with members of the tech community is that your playing up to a comunity that's constantly itching for a reason to slam any company they don't like, products they can stand, services that compete with onces they use. The general public will see it for what it is, another interesting commercial Microsoft produced to promote their search engine. Children will love it and start singing it anywhere it suits their fancy. That's why the marketers created this strategy and it was brilliant.
Chris, it's so blatantly obvious what your doing. You see this as another golden opportunity to make money. You couldn't slam the kids, and you can't slam the song, or risk getting run out of the house. So you invite the hate mongers to come up with all the reasons they can't stand it for personal gain. Pathetic, you should be ashamed of yourself!
Seriously, it's just creepy to think of ANY company commercializing a school. If this where just a hundred kids singing around a neighborhood it would just be accepted for what it is.
But seriously, this would be creepy for any product. Do you really want Coca Cola, McDonalds or really any company paying money to your childrens private school to get them to have the kids film a commercial for them?
I sincerely hope that this doesn't catch on. Kids are impressionable enough as it is. It's bad enough that they get bombarded with product placement everywhere else, let's try to draw the line at the school doing it too.
This is still one of my favorites, though.
This and a song he made about a jerk who stole his credit card.
I'm just a little bit surprised that out of all the submissions that I'm sure Microsoft got, that this slightly-rough-around-the-edges song won.
Did I say lame. I'm sorry I meant great. That is the pinnacle of advertising insight. I can't imagine a more inspiring ad for a search engine. I mean decision engine. Undoubtedly kids (or is it aimed at adults) will quit using Google and flock to BING! It's easier to type!
[CNET editor's note: Offensive language deleted.]
The only thing that could save them now would be if Steve Jobs died suddenly. Horrible to say, but true.
And there is a jingle for Bing other than that thing the guy does at the end of the commercials--"biiing"--?
- kids singing about a Microsoft product (this)
- Catholic-school first-graders that all... look.... and act... exactly... identical... (if you're never seen it, don't comment)
- The Obama-indoctrinated kids (Mmm mmm mmm! Barack Hussein Obama!)
- by protagonistic October 30, 2009 9:43 PM PDT
- It's simple. Microsoft just does not get it and the probably never will.
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