Microsoft Australia has launched a major TV, print and Internet advertising campaign for its Bing search engine, as it gears to double its marketplace share, largely – it hopes – by taking share from Google.
Doubling mightn’t be too hard – Bing holds only 7 percent share Down Under, according to B&T magazine, compared with 15 percent in the USA. The new campaign, worked up by creative agency BMF, drums home the slogan “Bing Is For Doing” and is aimed squarely at Generation Y – ie, those born between 1980 and 1999.
Gen Y film makers were recruited from production academies such as the Australian Film Television and Radio School.
Central to the campaign is a partnership with social network Facebook, following rejigging of Bing in most markets to emphasise social networking. The new Web design has three “panes”: one for a basic search result, one for added information like maps; and a third showing related content from Facebook “friends”.
The Australian campaign will run for 10 weeks and – apart from TV commercials – will include what BMF likes to call “rich media executions” with major digital publishers, print advertorials in ACP magazines, a “branded destination experience” for Xbox and dedicated a YouTube channel.
