Why Microsoft's $100 Million JWT Search Campaign May Be a Waste of Money

Microsoft is to spend $100 million on a campaign by JWT to promote its search engine, according to Ad Age. The effort demonstrates Microsoft's fundamental misunderstanding of the way tech marketing works. Also, given Microsoft's history, it may serve to quickly advertise the search engine's inferiority to Google.

Search loyalty is heavily tied to superior functionality and habituation add-ons that make it difficult for consumers to switch brands.

Google's search and ranking system has long been the best for retrieving results. It has bolted onto that lifestyle services that create barriers for consumers who want to move their online lives elsewhere. In management-speak this is called the creation of "high switching costs."

A good example: Me. I'm a Hotmail loyalist, but was "forced" to open a Gmail account simply because I need the calendar, RSS reader, news alerts, document holders, etc., that Google provides. (I still think Hotmail is a better service than Gmail on its own, but that's another story.)

The bottom line is that JWT's campaign will be walking into those headwinds. It will only work if Microsoft has, in fact, come up with a better mousetrap. Given the history, that's unlikely.

Lastly, a campaign of that size will, by sheer logistics, waste most of its money in traditional media. That's a shame, because the day Microsoft does come up with a decent search engine it will not need JWT to make TV spots for it. It will grow like wildfire on its own, and Hotmail holdouts will thank Bill Gates' cotton socks that we can combine our mail with our search and don't have to use those counter-intuitive Gmail "archive label" categories for our old mail any more.

In the meantime, that $100 million firehose will drive a lot of people to sample the new engine. If it sucks, the media schedule will remain out there for months, reminding everyone who sampled the product how deficient the experience was.