A new AdWeek article: MSN Draws Its Sword In Search Battle With Google, offers some more details about how Microsoft plans to promote their new search service. Here are a few highights from the article.
Stupid Microsoft!
At the World Economic Forum Bill Gates said Microsoft was, “‘stupid as hell’ to allow Google to establish a clear lead in the industry.” A few weeks ago, Gates told News.com that, “today’s search is nothing.”
Massive Campaign
To make up ground, MSN said it would launch a bigger advertising campaign than the 2000 effort that promoted MSN. That has been estimated at $150 million. MSN officials would not confirm exact spending levels. “We think there’s a hunger in the marketplace for another search competitor,” said Bob Visse, director of information services at MSN.
People Think Of Google
“When everyone thinks of search, they think of Google,” said Jeff Huggins, co-executive creative director at McCann. “The primary task is to make people aware that there’s more than one way to search the Internet.”
I bet the Yahoo and Ask Jeeves folks would beg to differ. (-:
User Loyalty? Not Yet
We don’t think folks are particularly loyal yet,” he [Bob Visse, director of information services at MSN] said. “We feel like there’s a great opportunity to innovate and move people to new services.”