Ask have launched a new campaign, information revolution, which you may have seen on the tube, on the tele or the web in the last couple of weeks. Ask (formerly they of butler as brand icon) are now positioning themselves as some sort of subversive missionary, acting with the consumers best interest at heart, to crush Google and free us from some sort of digital slavery.
The tube ads are intriguing enough, I did wander what it was, but dismissed it as some sort of faddish left wing movement who would probably campaign against the trains running on time. The TV ads are a bit more transparent, insomuch as they have 'Ask' flashed up on a board at the end. They are still nonsensical in their use of imagery - what are those people doing? Are they stealing? If so, could they please put things back where they found them?
The website (as they have the unique power to do) conveys a little more clearly what Ask are trying to achieve. By encouraging people to think about search, they are attempting (most probably in vein) to make people see search as an activity in its own right, rather than a property of one organisation (aka Google). If people viewed search as a pick and choose activity, they are more likely to go to another search site (aka ask). Whilst this is potentially interesting ground, and could open a wide debate about why we use the internet the way we do, it is in no way followed through in anything they go on to say. They get a range of known anti-establishment figures (John Bird, Peaches Geldof) to say how they have provided choice and how choice is the bedrock of democracy. All good and well to a point, but how is this going to make me not go to Google? I go through them because they're simple, they usually get the right results, and they've got loads of other cool stuff as well - earth and maps to name the more well known products of their R&D department.
Ask, rather than focusing on what is wrong with their market, should focus on what is right/wrong with them. Google did very well in positioning themselves as a brand with the interests of people at their core. They want to organise information so everyone can find everything with a greater degree of ease. Ask have no such proposition, only a negative response to a world they have failed to influence. And they fact they do it all through a campaign that looks like the bastard offspring of a trotskyite loner, is all the more embarrassing.
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