Everyday Cases: Bing's Big Picture

Learning marketing is like learning anything else: to really learn it, you need to use it. One of the best ways is to pay attention to "everyday cases:" try to understand what companies are trying to do in everyday life in the context of tools we learn in the classroom.

This week, I received an interesting e-mail regarding Bing.com, from Greg A, a participant in our Monday evening class.

First, here's the video Greg linked me to:

Second, here's what Greg wrote:

I saw this commercial this evening and I think it is a good example of The Big Picture. Considering Microsoft is going up against Google, which has such a large share of the search engine marketplace, it's a good example of share stealing I believe. I want to switch to bing but ugh, it's so hard to not automatically type Google when the need arises haha... "It's not just a search engine, it's the first ever decision engine.. From Microsoft." Great, great clincher.

I agree! To put this in Big Picture terms, I believe Microsoft's Bing.com is looking to build a viable search engine that both realizes the revenue inherent in providing search, as well as challenges Google's hegemony in search and the cash flows that allow it to threaten Microsoft in the browser and operating system markets.

To do this, Bing's Marketing Objective is to Acquire new customers and their Source of Volume is to Steal Share. Their Segmentation scheme appears to be an internet search engine as the Main Variable (the ante to play in this game), with a superior "decision engine" as the Dynamic Variable differentiating Bing.com from Google. Their target audience is (probably) something like "heavy internet search users who are frustrated with the amount of effort required to find fairly mundane things, like local restaurants, specific people, etc." Their positioning is all about the "Decision Engine," which actually ties in nicely to WHY people actually use search engines - to learn something and/or make a decision about something very specific. Their goal is NOT to search; it's to FIND! (Their 5-box positioning encompasses that thought - moving people from thinking they need to search to getting them to realize they want to find and, thus, using Bing.com would be better than Google.)

Nice job Greg. This is a great everyday case!