“The Algorithm is from Jersey”, “The Algorithm killed Jeeves”, “The Algorithm spent millions on billboards across the country that no one understands.” Okay so I made the last one up, but you get the idea.
If you’re thoroughly confused by the previous paragraph don’t worry you aren’t alone. The aforementioned quotes are from a series of billboards rapidly springing up across the United States. So what are they all about?
The billboards are an effort by Ask.com to gain some market share, and further distance themselves from their previous incarnation as AskJeeves. The campaign is yet another example of Crispin Porter + Bogusky’s peculiar sense of humor. They’re the ad agency responsible for the truth commercials (the effective but fairly offbeat antismoking campaign) and the creepy albeit memorable silent plastic headed Burger King ads.
Here’s what Ask.com’s CEO Jim Lanzone had to say about the new campaign:
“Ask.com has launched an advertising campaign focused on ‘The Algorithm.’ The goal is to incite a consumer conversation around the importance of a search engine’s algorithm and its integral role in making one engine different from another, Lanzone said.
‘The Algorithm’ is the single most important ingredient that determines the relevance of search results, yet its impact on the overall search experience is taken for granted by most consumers. At Ask.com, we feel that in order to drive consumer awareness and use of our engine, it is important to highlight the uniqueness of our algorithm, which takes a different approach to ranking than our competitors. The Ask.com algorithm’s relevance methodology goes beyond the popularity focus of Google, Yahoo and MSN’s, and is the only one to break the Web down into topic clusters and determine community-based relevance in real time.”
So while the billboards have started to get people’s attention the question remains will Ask.com be boosted by a clever offline campaign, or will “the Algorithm” meet the same fate as Jeeves?
The biggest problem the campaign faces so far is that even if someone searches for the campaign Ask.com has almost nothing linking them to the campaign. The ad’s are amusing once you know what they’re talking about but unfortunately most commuters out there don’t even know what an algorithm is, and those who do would associate it with Google not Ask.
