A manifesto manifesto
Is it 1984 all over again? “1984″ of course is a reference not to the Orwellian novel but to the famous Super Bowl ad from Apple (then Apple Computer, Inc.), which forever positioned the company as challenging the status quo.
With their latest 60-second spot, Microsoft is telling us we’re doing it wrong. We’re looking in the wrong places, and maybe because of this the world is collapsing around us.
The ad for the nascent Bing (from the good folks at JWT in New York) seems to say that your stock portfolio is kaput because you Googled your old girlfriend and used Yahoo to find a new digital camera. Really?
The Bing Manifesto then professes that Bing is the thing to pull us out of our internet-driven misery, all because it’s not a search engine, it’s a decision engine. A what?
Right time. Right place. I see this, I think it means it helps me find stuff, somehow. Is it shopping? Travel? What is it? What makes it different?
And then… the barrage of images-that-look-like-stock-but-probably-cost-a-bundle come to a close, and it’s over. Bing. Just like that.
As one who follows this stuff way too closely, I know what the ad is about. I’ve read the pre-launch hype and blogs. But I bet your average Googler is wondering what Bing is. And I’m wondering if that is enough to drive them to the site. And then I’m wondering if they’ll recognize the difference in the search results they get. And I wonder if that will be enough to get them to return, to change their ways, to challenge the status quo.
For me, that’s a lot of leaps to make.
So I’m no fan of the grand Manifesto, and I don’t think 2010 will be like 1984, at least based on what the ad is telling me.
Contributor: Jennifer Umali
