How do you get people to stop Googleing? You don’t. How do you get people to realize that there is another choice in search? This, in a nutshell, was the challenge that we faced with the launch of Microsoft’s redesigned search engine, Bing.

Did you know 36% of the time the search product is a failure? Or that among people who claim to be VERY satisfied with their primary search engine, 69% believe “search engines return ridiculously large amounts of results,” and 63% think it “takes too long to sift through all the links to find the results you really need?” The opportunity existed for us to associate conventional search with being overloaded with information, with being a volcano of tangentially relevant results. ‘Search Overload Syndrome’ had been diagnosed. At the same time, we needed to make the presentation of Bing’s alternative offer as compelling as possible. Microsoft had created an innovative search interface that was visual, organized and surfaced relevant results. We needed to find an expression that embodied these benefits and pivoted off our search insights. A ‘Decision Engine,’ not another search engine, was born.

The results speak for themselves. Less than two months after the campaign launched we had already exceeded our full-year awareness and perception goals.

As a planner on this account I helped craft strategies for different campaign executions (internal and external) and briefed creatives. I kept the core team abreast of what was going on in the search category on a daily basis. I analyzed consumer and market research to help keep Bing ahead of the curve.