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Can bing Help Me Decide?

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What Is This bing Thing?

bing arrived on my radar with an email that said …

In August, Bing shopping and cashback will offer significantly higher rebates from hundreds of retailers to help consumers save on essential back-to-school items. Below please find a press release that highlights the survey [and] information on Bing shopping’s upcoming back-to-school promotion. Also, watch for more information about the promotion on the Bing cashback Facebook page: www.facebook.com/cashback .

I accepted an invitation to talk with Melissa Powell, Senior Product Manager, bing, about the recent research and the the new “decision” engine.

How Does bing Help My Decisions?

binglogo

The first thing Melissa said was, “The search interface hasn’t kept up with the explosion of content.” In response to that situation Microsoft wanted to cater to what people are doing online and where they are searching for it.

bing has identified four verticals as important: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition or finding a local business. For example, in travel bing has several interactive tools to help travelers. They include …

  • Price Predictor uses Farecast technology to predict whether the price of a flight is going up or down and offers a “Buy Now” or “Wait” recommendation with a confidence level and expected price increase or decrease over the next seven days.
  • Rate Indicator analyzes historical rate data to determine whether the current price is a good deal.
  • Travel Deals features up-to-the-minute flight and hotel deals for nearly 40 cities around the world and why particular flights are considered deals.

Melissa underscored the bing quest by stating …

Bing helps you make better decisions faster, especially in the key areas of shopping, travel, health and local. One of my favorite features is Bing shopping, which helps you search, shop and save in a snap. With back-to-school just around the corner, you can save on millions of products from hundreds of the nation’s top retailers. Starting August 10 and for a limited time, we’ll offer as much as double the normal cash back from select retailers to help families save on their back-to-school essentials.

Research Before I Decide …

You can’t miss the beautiful design of the homepage the changes daily and becoming a member of bing has perks — open a bing cashback account, get bing news alerts, add bing map collections, and gain full access to the bing Webmaster Center and the bing Developer Center.

I signed up. Well, I started to, but I don’t have an MSN Live address and I’m not sure I want another id … as pretty as bing is, I decided more research was in order.

So I used bing to check bing versus google.
You can check and compare here …

I compared the cost of living between Chicago and Salt Lake City. I think Google got closer to what I might want to know.

Some folks say bing maybe offering information to sway my decision … I tried to find more examples of bias and wasn’t successful. Some folks are more clever than I.

Decide or Decide to Buy? …

From the first hello “every bing” has been about buying. The introductory email pointed to a back-to-school shoppers survey. I learned that:

  • 56% of shoppers won’t be buying Back-to-School supplies online
  • 75% will trade down to get more value for price

At the sign up screen, I was greeted with

bingcashback

and when I hesitated to complete that step … I was received an email reminding me of the opportunity to get cash back on my purchases. It read,

Hello,
Welcome to Bing, the search that pays you back!

What I hear is not “decide,” but “decide to buy.”

Can bing Help Me Decide?

A small sign upper right on the bing home page reads:

Live Search is evolving. Tour Bing …

Can bing help me decide?

I keep remembering my mom saying “if everyone jumped off the bridge …” As Judy Shapiro said,

Maybe I am just too independently minded (and not the primary target), but I resist the notion that Microsoft technology will decide anything for me. What I really want is technology to give me the information I need to make the decision I want.

Have you tried bing? What did you find?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

Provocative vs. Genuine

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sealionI’ve been thinking about the difference between being provocative and being genuine lately.

We all read stories or see ads that are “provocative.” They are fun to read and see from time to time. But I wonder… do you trust a provocative story or would you prefer genuine writing?

There have been a few blog posts going around this week about being provocative in your blogging, marketing or overall strategy. I read that being being provocative has value in challenging people and pushing them to think.

Sure, I can agree with that.

Another blog I read suggested, “Being provocative isn’t about being controversial. It’s about being ahead of your time, solving problems in new and interesting ways, and creating awesome brands and products.”

But what does the word “provocative” really mean, I wondered. Here’s one definition that seems to be generally accepted: “Making people angry or excited: deliberately aimed at exciting or annoying people.”

Being provocative to me means trying to get people to react emotionally, quickly, instead of giving them something to think about, and respond to in time. It can mean prodding someone’s emotions instead of challenging the way they think.

If you were talking to a person face-to-face and you could tell they were being “provocative” or controversial just to get a reaction out of you, how would you feel? Would you feel challenged intellectually, or emotionally annoyed?

Every now and again I catch myself getting incensed by something I read which *I* know is “wrong.” I start a post and am writing away but I stop myself because what I am in fact doing is reactionary. I’m not carefully considering the points put forward and formulating an intelligent response.

That could very well be because in many provocative ads or blog posts there are few ideas to think about, only phrases to react to. I’ve read that writing like this is like the loud person at a party who swears a lot and is “controversial” just because he or she has nothing intelligent to say.

Do you read “provocative” blogs and enjoy “provocative” marketing strategies because you are enriched or learn from them, or do you just enjoy the controversy?

By Kathryn Jennex
www.kathrynjennex.com

Should the Conversation with Big Brands Be Going Two Ways?

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relationships button

Flashback: We were sitting in a lovely Italian Trattoria. I was hot-shot Executive Editor in my thirties with my editor team having lunch with the President of the company. He asked us what we thought of a competitor’s product.

Replies came from around the table. All responses were negative observations.

He listened without remarking until every person had finished their critiques. Then he simply asked one question, “If their product has so many flaws, why do you suppose they sell 100,000 copies of each of the 104 little book in the series every season?”

One question pointed out that we didn’t know as much about our competitor as we thought.

What about Big Brands Are Social Media Folks Missing?

After SOBCon and BlogHer and recent conversations with Becky McCray, Stephanie Smirnov, and Sheila Scarborough, that story has been coming back to me. We’ve been talking about how big brands have been going after bloggers with a clearer intent to capture our page view and sometimes even gather our ideas.

For some of us, it’s become a heady experience. For other’s it’s lead to some regrettable behavior — we all know the stories.

What stands out is that the focus seems to have shifted hugely in one direction. Sometimes it can appear as if new social media folks are only here to learn. We know the culture. They don’t.

3492172284_cd174f2946-2

Hmmm.

My curiosity leads me to my own questions …

If the big brands are so confused about serving customers, how did they get to be big brands?

If we only see what we’re good at fixing, we’re overlooking a huge opportunity for cooperative learning.

Flash Forward: Now I sit at a meeting table with a Branding agency, a PR agency, a traditional marketing firm, a direct mail expert, an email expert, a radio and TV person, and two other support team members. We’re writing the strategy and tactics for a huge product launch. Most of them don’t know much about social media beyond that it exists, but they know their own specialities deeply. But they build on what each other has planned and they learn from what each other has to say.

Presentation is a one-way communication. We talk and they listen. We broadcast and call them to action — in a mainstream advertisement or in a meeting, the goal is the same.

A conversation is a two-way communication. Both parties talk and listen. No one is in control.

Have we stopped listening to the big brands? Is it time to start listening again? Should the conversation with big brands be going both ways?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

Do Leaders Wear Jeans? Does What You Wear Show Who You Are?

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How We Look at Each Other

I’ve always been a bit frivolous and uninvolved with fashion. I like nice things, but I don’t like to spend time acquiring them, maintaining them, or thinking about the right thing to wear. Maybe it’s because I grew up with the luxury of school uniforms. Maybe it’s because I try not to define people by their clothes and their hairstyle. I say try because I know that I still do.

  • When someone comes to a geek party looking like she just stepped off of a yacht, I think she might have missed the boat on connecting with this group.
  • When a guy’s hair is dyed so screaming comic book pink I have to fight to see the face beneath it, I wonder what he doesn’t want me to see.
  • When I’m in a room of highly fashion savvy people, I start shrinking a bit and wondering what other cool things they know that I don’t.

It’s not fair really, but I think things based on what people are wearing. We all do. We sort with our eyes before anyone even says a word. We assume a person’s visual presentation reflects his or her choices, values, and intelligence. We gravitate toward people who choose as we do. People who look like who they are and what they’re saying get our trust more easily. When the clothes and the conversation don’t match, we go with what we see.

How could I have been slow to realize that a disconnect in what people see would make it harder for them to “get” me? I connect more easily with people online than off.

Let’s consider something as simple as a pair of jeans. Who’d have thought that a new pair of jeans would shift my ability to connect by 180 degrees?

Do Leaders Wear Jeans?

When I first went to The Image Studios last fall, I was told that my jeans had to go. I argued with the idea.

I work with geeks. I don’t want to look younger, but I don’t want to look something I’m not. AND I sure don’t want to look my mother!

The smart stylist who had just met me. Let it go.

You might remember that right before SxSW Deshaia, a talented stylist from The Image Studios came to my condo for Wardrobe Smackdown 1. She explained again that my jeans had to go.

These jeans you have on are baggy, traditional, and acid washed. They say who you were. You need jeans that communicate who you are. In your case, they need to speak to Connected, Irresistible, Intuitive, Creative and Loving.

Jeans communication. Strangely enough I sort of got what she was saying. The jeans I had were from the 90s. They looked old fashioned and comfortable — not alive, creative, and innovative. My jeans drove off in a bag of Good Will donations for someone who authentically is still living in a baggy, traditional, acid washed world.

With no time to lose, I bought the new pair, contemporary and well fit. Suddenly, I understood — soon as I put them on I felt more “with it.” I’m sure I looked more connected to now than 10 years ago.

old jeans Joes Jeans

The new jeans (right) add credibility. I look like I know the ideas that suit the world now.

Do they change my thinking? Of course not. But they underscore my values before I even talk. That’s what this visible authenticity project is all about — being seen, heard, and understood on every level. When your jeans are working for you, you don’t have to work so hard.

Baggy, traditional, acid-washed jeans doesn’t communicate my ideas or my values.
Contemporary, well-fitting, one-of-kind jeans worth talking about do.

Does what you wear show who you are?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Related:
Visual Authenticity: How Do You Show Your Promise?
Why Play the Game, If We Aren’t Playing for Keeps?

It's Not How Big the Tool … It's the Thought, Skill, Fluency, and Authenticity Behind It

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Show ‘Em What’s to Love

Are you caught up in the conversation about social media tools? It’s fun to talk about what they do. We could spend a lifetime inventing new toy and tools that measure and move conversations on the Internet. Unfortunately, that won’t make business more relational or more efficient.

As we reach further fragmentation in the communication business, influx points how critical it is for us to specialize, get to know the tools and to put them to proper use.

Ad agencies aren’t that well equipped to play in this space, given their fundamental skills are all about creating commercial messages, not bare bones, message free entertainment. In social media, it’s about having specific tools, data sets and people skilled in the media who can create responses and ideas with social applicability.

In the short term, this will force agencies to identify and work with third parties to engage in this practices, where strategically relevant.

The opportunity is here for new working relationships. We can make the transition easier if we:

  1. Think vertical — the business opportunities will be in relational niches.
  2. Start with a marketing plan, a problem or a goal that your vertical is working on.
  3. Choose and use the tools that will best meet the goal and solve the problem.
  4. Name and claim the skill sets that the tools you’ve identified require.
  5. Evaluate and analyze the contribution of each particular tool to further the solutions and meet the marketing goals.
  6. Propose what you know to the companies in the vertical you’ve chosen.

My point is that no big brand, no agency is going to be able to speak print, television, radio, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blog, and other social media with fluency. Few people are that social media “multi-lingual.” The opportunity to specialize is huge.

It’s not about the size or scope of our tools. It’s our thought, skill, and authenticity when we use ’em. It’s about showing them what’s to love about what we do.

The key problem before us is …
How do we help business become fluent in the social sphere while maintaining authenticity for us all?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Buy the ebook.

Register for SOBCon09 NOW!!

Invest, Learn, Grow!

Listening, Big Brothers, Logic, and Believing What You Hear

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What Did He Say?

Loan me ten dollars, but only give me five. That way you’ll owe me five. I’ll owe you five, and we’ll be even.

My younger, older brother is a clever guy — always has been. He could talk a fish out of water. He could get the neighborhood to wash the car for him. Everything he did seemed to be a game or a show of some kind.

“I can read your mind.”
“No, you can’t.
“Sure I can. You’re thinking I can’t read your mind.”

He’d send a whistle through his teeth and I’d be there. He had a junk drawer filled with exciting objects and a mind of exciting ideas.

“Kid, let me tell you about that picture. See, the princess — that’s you — She has two kings beside her and she has to do everything they tell her except on St. Patrick’s Day. On St. Patrick’s Day, she gets to be the queen.”

I’m his younger sister by more than 8 years. If he wanted company, I was there. I saw magic in him. He saw an eager audience in me.

“Want to split a coke?”
A few minutes later, I’d get an empty bottle.
“Sorry, kid, my half was on the bottom. I had to drink your half to get to it.”

He wasn’t a teacher in any traditional form, but I learned a lot by growing up with him.

“How does that work?”
“If you don’t know, I can’t tell you. If you do, then I don’t need to.”

I learned to listen for the meaning under the words.

Most folks don’t play quick and clever like my younger, older brother used to play with me. Still we all get caught using convoluted and circular logic — even when we talk to ourselves. Be on the lookout for it, especially today.

Happy April 1 … “Don’t believe anything you hear and only half of what you see.”

Ever bump into someone like my younger, older brother?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Buy the ebook.

Register for SOBCon09 NOW!!

Invest, Learn, Grow!