Ask.com Algorithm Campaign -where’s the brand message?

Has anyone yet figured out that the Ask.com algorithm campaign is a complete failure?

When I first saw the billboards in San Francisco, I thought they were for Google. Then lo and behold a week later I saw the Ask logo appear on them. My immediate reaction was, “what are they trying to do?” Do they even have a clue that most folks don’t know an algorithm from a logarithm— and don’t even know what either does!

Now I have a particular big bone to pick with this campaign because my firm, BGDi, did the original brand identity and branding work for Ask Jeeves prior to their initial IPO and through the launch. The founders of the company were passionate at the time about Jeeves. They viewed him as a personal assistant that made it really easy to get what you want through simple natural language based search. Ask a question and get a simple answer. Jeeves represented someone, a personal connection ready to help when you needed it. He actually was the first, recognizable online personality.

Then along came Barry Diller of AC/InterActiveCorp and bought up Ask Jeeves and the decision was made to kill the butler —a big branding mistake if you ask me. After all, the butler, no matter what their surveys said about international acceptance, was a given and known icon of the brand. He was recognizable and a real person, so to speak, behind the search function. The only online search site represented by a personality.

By dropping Jeeves and creating the Ask (retained from the original logo we designed) they basically made the company a generic word used by many other companies including another search company called EasyAsk. Why do this? It’s really just plain dumb and bad brand management.

Good branding is about differentiation, not assimilation into mass language use.

So, we’re back at the super expensive mega-agency-ego-trip-algorithm-campaign now seen on TV, print ads, online and outdoor billboards. I’m positive the ad agency doing this did not do one of the fundamental things you need to do to push brand value of a product to the customer:

a survey to find out what customers value the most in search.

Honestly, I don’t think it’s the algorithm. As I said, most folks do not even know what an algorithm is and how it would even benefit them in using ask.com.  So spending all this money on elaborate ads and billboards and tv spots just creates more of the “I don’t get it” factor.  There is no clear customer benefit that’s right up front.

It’s like promoting the suspension system of BMW by saying “it’s the springs”. How does this relate to the experience of the consumer? Seeing a fast moving car catching all the turns at high speed down a curving coastal road next to the Pacific Ocean at sunset—now that’s an experience I want.

So, I look forward to the announcement of the failure of the ask.com campaign. I wonder if the agency doing this campaign has anyone on board who really knows what an algorithm is?