In the end, Ask's campaign post mortem meeting might have touted the benefits of elevated awareness, but no elevated search market share occurred. In fact, during the time frame from September 2006 (campaign launch) to May 2007, Ask.Com lost about 10 percent of market share, according to Hitwise.
On a pop culture note, a "South Park" episode airing on March 28, 2007, featured kids making the sneer that "Nobody uses Ask Jeeves, just Google search it." The Butler had been dropped from Ask over a year earlier.
Nobody cares about your Butler. Don't you get it?
2005 MSN growth spurt
In February 2005, Microsoft planned to reach 90 percent of U.S. households 40 times in eight weeks. As I recall, the big, bold campaign had some great agencies involved as well. Shops like McCann Erickson and Avenue A were at the reins of this big event. The effort was so bold, it had to work.
Something did, and MSN had a 5.5 percent share of searches by July 2005. But by the following year, Hitwise showed MSN search at 11.8 percent, and MSN search was back at about 5.5 percent by December 2008.
Hundreds of millions of dollars to get right back where you started? That's gotta hurt. Why not throw another $100 million at the problem a few years later. It'll definitely work this time.
It's cruel to think a great product can be stagnant. If the creative is going to be effective, it has to be married to great technical execution. The driving triggers have to be more than following Google's selling point: "Don't just search. Find." That pretty much describes what I do every day on Google.
To bring them in, you have to be more compelling.
To keep them, you have to be clever.
Tell them and show them the great things they'll find. Great creative might actually get them there, but as history has taught us, it's hard to keep them when it's so easy to switch. Don't give them a learning curve, and for heaven's sake, please don't make them think.
Do something
Each and every ad campaign that attempts to gain market share fails. But why? Utter lack of actionable creative flow for starters. "The algorithm constantly finds Jesus." What does that even mean? We are witnessing the Paris Hilton syndrome of advertising: it looks good, it's pretty expensive, but it doesn't really do much to earn your respect and application.
These campaigns are more likely to inspire "Pribilof Stare" than they are more searches.
Hiring ad people to initiate search needs is like looking to an oncologist for a Pap Smear analysis. Sure, your average cancer physician is likely to have some well-founded opinions, but you are always going to be better with the experts. In this case, the searching, consuming public are the experts.
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