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?
Rumors have begun to trickle from Googleville that the Jolly Search Giant is beginning to change its mind about those fickle fellows who espouse creativity.
You know, the sort who don't necessarily think you should research 41 different shades of blue. The sort, indeed, who sleep under their desks at ad agencies.
Which leads me to wonder whether a certain rebalancing might shortly occur in the tender relationship between the left-brainers and right-brainers of product selling.
The Web largely began as a functional experience, where everything you looked at was created by those who felt that what it does would always be a little more more important than how it looks. Partly because these people had no idea, nor did they really care, how to create something that actually looked truly inviting.
Few might agree that Google and YouTube, despite the fact that huge numbers of fingers populate them daily, are the most aesthetic of locations. Utilitarian would be the polite way of describing their sense of design.
A 10-year-old mathematician's idea of pulchritude would be a less charitable version. Somehow, every time I go to YouTube, in particular, it feels like the crummiest of Blockbusters, with DVD boxes that are fraying at the corners.
Ad agencies, very heavy on pretty and very light on engineering, at first tried to mimic print ads and billboards and squeezed them into a medium that was far more individual, far more personal than any seen before.
The Googlies thought ad agencies somewhat risible relics of a disappearing world--like a bunch of Don Johnsons trying to deal with the brainy world of CSI.
Yet while the Web is still very functional, it is also the place where we increasingly live far too much of our lives. We watch TV on the Web. We read papers on the Web. We find lovers on the Web. And we continue to tell them how much we love them on the Web.
I know that some people feel that the pages of, for example, Yahoo Sports and the Huffington Post have been occasionally enhanced by wallpaper ads that add energy to the home pages without taking away from the content.
So advertising, done right, surely has a chance to make Web pages more attractive, more involving, and more inspiring.
There was a time in the U.K., for example, when the TV ads were actually more interesting than much of the programing. It is possible. It does happen. Brazil is another country where advertising can be far more involving far than the latest soap opera.
As Google decides that display advertising is where the new money will inevitably be, ad agencies might just think about creating work that makes Google's pages a little more inviting, a little more, dare one say it, exciting.
How strange it might be, in some optimistic future, if advertising created by outsiders actually helped Google with its business as well as advertisers with theirs.
The advent of Bing has shown that just a little aesthetic sense might, in fact, help to attract real people out there, those scouring the Web for anything that might brighten their day.
Just imagine if Google's and YouTube's pages were adorned with ads that offered wit, charm, and design sense as opposed to little blue words offering last minute vacations or little yellow words promising erectile function.
Might that be good for business? Might it even encourage YouTube, in particular, into a redesign?
It is always fun when serious people offer a confessional.
On Microsoft's Bing blog, director Stefan Weitz decides to tell everyone who will listen that he has been an "avid rocket launcher since 1975."
I am not aware what effect this might have had on his parents, his neighbors, or the local police and fire services as he was growing up, but I can find no evidence that he was ever arrested for such avid launching.
Weitz is now, however, vexed that science is not cool in school.
So he and his friends at the Bingdome have decided to revive child enthusiasm for launching.
Please welcome Mission: 10,000 Rockets, a program designed to get your kids to design rockets that will successfully immolate beyond ashes several countries of which we have not become fond.
No, wait. I haven't got that quite right.
Perhaps something like this will be useful for a trip to the planet Titan?
(Credit: CC Erik Charlton/Flickr)Mission: 10000 Rockets is, in fact, asking kids to imagine what the next generation of space travel might look like. If you can get your kids to walk away from their Grand Theft Auto and design the rockets of the future, they might get their creations actually built.
No, not to full size, but at least they will be brought to physical being by some "cool artists" whose work might just be worth a fortune one day.
A book of all the designs will also be produced, all the proceeds from which will be returned to schools. And eight extremely fortunate schools will receive $5,000 to fund scientific projects in their cash-strapped establishments.
As a recent job advertisement for an astronaut in the Calgary edition of Craigslist proved, there is a renewed enthusiasm in the space project, some of it no doubt engendered by the very real prospect that our own world will shortly disintegrate.
So what better way to make your children productive this weekend than by getting them to design a spacecraft that might, one day, preserve a little humanity for the residents of the Planet Titan to marvel at?
Microsoft has responded swiftly to suggestions that its Bing search engine seems to throw up ads alongside the keyword "pornography".
In a post Thursday, I outlined some of the suspicions that surrounded the appearance of ads for Bing next to searches for fleshy entertainment.
A Microsoft representative declared in an e-mail: "Microsoft has not purchased the keyword 'pornography,' and this term has never been in our AdWords account."
This will serve as a considerable relief to many upstanding citizens.
The company representative continued: "It is our policy on the Bing marketing team that we do not have any adult content as part of any of our keyword buys or other marketing campaigns."
However, Microsoft has vivid views about how this alleged relationship between "binging" and films featuring somewhat less talented actors naked might have come about.
"The keyword that seems to be triggering these results is 'free videos,'" the Microsoft representative explained. "We are following up with Google to understand why this ad is showing up in these types of queries."
That should be a very interesting conversation. One looks forward to reading a transcript.
I tend to believe that life's pleasures should be experienced with real human beings, relatively sober, and free of excessive chemical content.
However, I understand there are those who make use of search engines to fuel their various needs, including those of pornographic succour.
Which brings me to Bing.
There seems to be some agreement among the cognoscenti that Microsoft's fine search engine offers optimal results for those who are seeking the filmic freshness of the flesh. Blocking such freshness can also be a difficult maneuver.
You see, Bing has excellent video search properties. And you might be astonished to hear that one of the major types of video for which humanity's needy search is video of a pornographic bent.
However, TechCrunch claims to have encountered evidence that Bing has entered an entirely new realm of raunch.
An enterprising TechCrunch employee decided to google the term "pornography" and was perhaps simultaneously astonished and elated to discover a sponsored link from Bing.
No, there is no suggestion that Bing is the better search engine for drug paraphernalia.
(Credit: CC James Wheare/Flickr)The artful ad was headlined "Free Video." It then extolled Bing's remarkable access to "thousands of videos."
Somehow, I feel there may be more than thousands.
I know those of a technical leaning might suggest that sometimes when you do quite a few searches in succession the ads don't seem to keep up, so the ads that you see for your second search might have been generated by your first search.
I was still dissatisfied. I could not understand why anyone would search "pornography" when the very simple "porn" would have clearly sufficed. Is the suggestion that only those of a elevated snootiness, those who refer to pornography by its full name, get the Bing ad?
Then I stumbled into a blog post by Aaron Goldman, who seems to be quite au fait with the digital marketing world.
Goldman claims that he googled "Google porn searches" and immediately encountered an ad for Bing. Now the minds of those of a suspicious disposition must truly be wandering and wondering.
I would never be the one to suggest that Microsoft deliberately seeks out porn business.
However, business is, indeed, business. So one wonders just how much awareness there is among bingers of this alleged arousing serendipity?
The new Bing Dynasty desperately wants you to love it.
And it understands you so well in these times of penury and desperation that it knows you have certain vulnerabilities that might be worth exploring: the vulnerabilities that lurk in the area around your pocket.
Therefore Microsoft has launched its first-ever TV ad for Cashback, a nifty system that gives you a little money when you buy something vital--such as sneakers or a camera--through a Bing search.
It does seem like splendidly commercial bribery. However, I do wish that the ad might have been a little less prosaic and a little more inspiring.
You see, if you're a decision engine rather than a search engine, you have to aspire to higher goals. It really isn't enough to produce an ad that might have been the work of JC Penney or KMart in one of their more awkward moments.
I would have preferred something that stirred the emotions, rather than something that feels like it's going through the motions.
Bribery should be alluring, not merely an everyday solution to an annoying practical problem.
Still, you know that even with this mundane execution, it won't be hard for some to decide that binging for your supper is better than singing for it.
I have never watched NBC's "The Philanthropist." (I have embedded a small excerpt, to offer you a little excitement.)
However, the show seems to be the battleground for a less than altruistic lawsuit against Microsoft Bing's ad agency, JWT and its holding company, WPP.
According to AdAge, the plaintiff, a Delaware-based company specializing in "program-integrated advertising" called Denizen, is claiming that it was in discussions with WPP as long ago as 2002.
These talks seem to have gone on for more than four years and Denizen claims it had a confidentiality agreement in place.
However, when they espied "The Philanthopist," they saw ads outside the normal commercial break for search engine Bing featuring the actors in the show (yes, Neve Campbell still lives and prospers), ads that had a "plot advancing element."
This appears to be key in Denizen's claims to patent infringement. (Here's the patent, if you enjoy reading that kind of thing.)
Naturally the lawsuit uses such strongly sensitive words as "malicious" and "willful."
Not having the patent to be a lawyer, let alone a patent lawyer, I am grateful that a person whose commenting handle is "nvpatentlawyer" offered this opinion in AdAge: "If someone wants to invalidate this patent, it would likely take very little effort to do so because, if it is not 'anticipated,' it is certainly 'obvious' in view of past practices in the U.S."
I'm not the finest googler in the world, but I am struggling to find a Web site that might belong to Denizen. I tried "binging" too, without joy.
Which leaves me with this strange thought: is it possible that, in these dark economic times, Denizen might, when the shoving has overtaken the pushing, still like to enter into a partnership with the somewhat larger WPP?
I don't know what made me think of that. It's the patent cynic that lurks beneath my armpit, perhaps.
A little while ago, I was working with a client who wanted to change his very large company's brand name.
His greatest concern was that the new name should make for a simple URL.
I wondered whether it wasn't more important that the brand name should be memorable. Isn't that where it all starts? And ends?
I was reminded of this conversation Tuesday when I arrived in Austin, Texas. By chance and a glass of viognier, I encountered a photographer who wanted her work to enjoy a wider audience. She gave me her card, headlined by her URL: CourtneyChavanell.com. Which, given that Courtney Chavanell was her name, appeared to be appropriate.
(Credit:
CC ChrisDlugosz/Flickr)
However, I secretly wanted to tell her to change her name like actors do- because Chavanell is tough to remember. She said the key to her work was optimism, so I wanted to suggest that she change her professional name to Courtney Optimist. Everyone would remember that, URL or not.
There was a time when people thought URLs were the key to getting hordes to throng your site. Make it short, have one of the most important keywords--sex, free, go, eat, my, and porn being examples--and your fortune was made.
People still try to trade the most simple URLs for hopeful hundreds of thousands. They will still line up in the hope of getting a vanity URL from Facebook.
But don't most people simply go to the little search box, type in the name of what they're looking for, and search?
If it's something they want to go back to, they'll bookmark it. But they won't remember what the URL is. For the simple reason that they don't need to. The Bingoogle fraternity does it for them.
Indeed, in Japan, a country so often so clever about these things, the trend in advertising is not for companies to slap their URLs three feet high in the bottom right of the ad--it's to have search boxes with suggested search terms.
Every time I see a URL in an ad that tell you to go to COMPANY NAME/special offer or some such, I wonder if there's anyone who would ever do such a thing.
Perhaps there are those generic words that people absent-mindedly type, perhaps just out of boredom. I don't know, URLs like kitchen.com. Or music.com. But could this still be a significant number?
How many people really do bother to type URLs these days?
Just wondering.
The people have googled. The people have binged.
And still there is no sign of the one thing the world needs most: a picture of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's Argentinian lover.
(Credit:
CC Mark Licht Notions Capital.com/Flickr)
According to Fox 5 in New York, "maria belen shapur photo" was one of the top searches on the Web of intrigue Thursday. And according to Google Trends, "mark sanford mistress photo" rounds out the top 10 Google searches at the moment. Yet no trace has been found of the governor's taste in clandestine lovers.
It is a little sad that the media is pitching its large and very moral tent outside Ms. Shapur's Buenos Aires apartment. Somehow, affairs of the heart don't always seem the most appropriate subjects for public conjecture. It's just that they're so deeply exciting that we cannot prevent our more fundamental instincts from taking over.
So I prefer to think of this as a technological exercise, a mixed martial-arts battle of the search engines.
Will Google have it first? Will Bing's decisive algorithm slap its more vaunted rival across the chops and proclaim triumph? It may only be a matter of milliseconds. But in the search business, milliseconds count.
I bet you just can't wait.
So the Googlies are, allegedly, gnashing and wailing.
Their ears, their nostrils, even their fully formed eyebrows are twitching beyond all human control.
Though I am not one of those who necessarily subscribes to the idea that Googlies ever have extreme emotions, the rumor is that they are in a fizzy tizzy. Because of Bing, the new search fragrance from Microsoft.
According to a report, Google's Sergey Brin has ordered some of his finest brains to take Bing apart as if it were a secretly smuggled advance exemplar of the Palm Pre.
He wants to know how it thinks. He wants to know who its friends are. He wants its very innards examined for performance-enhancing algorithms.
I would very much like to believe this story. Mainly because I want the word "Bing" to become part of the language, but also because Bing seems like a rather fine product.
However, a small part of me, somewhere between my spleen and my liver, is sending a warning signal. You see, last Christmas I read the highly amusing Michael Wolff biography of Rupert Murdoch.
In it, Wolff describes how Murdoch's wife, Wendi Deng, encouraged him to hang with a younger crowd. You know, some of the folks that might just decimate the newspaper industry as we know it. Folks such as Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
So perhaps that place between my spleen and liver has been aroused by the fact that the newspaper that broke the "Google is blinging scared" story was Murdoch's own, and very much beloved, New York Post.
Of course it's possible that someone at Google was trembling so much that he spilled his tale of fear to a friend at the New York Post.
However, when you're perceived as being a little bit of a, well, monopoly, isn't it nice to occasionally bathe in the idea that there is a serious threat to your throne and your, um, pension? Might you just be tempted to find a nicely engineered way of slipping that story out there just to improve the way you are regarded?
It's a little like movies of the last 15 years or so in which the male protagonist has to show his vulnerable side to get the girl.
Because he sheds a tear or two and visits a psychologist to talk about his mama, we end up thinking his belching, slobbering, swilling, snorting, slightly uncouth persona was all actually rather charming.
He does get the girl, though. And that, for him, is really all that matters.
