14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is reportedly cooking a new marketing campaign for its search engine, with the focus not on the existing Live Search, but on codename Kumo. Advertising agency JWT managed to pick up the new Microsoft search campaign worth an estimated $80 to $100 million, with the Redmond company keeping completely mum on the matter. AdAge indicated that the software giant aimed to market its new search engine, under development and being dogfooded internally at Microsoft. The Redmond company confirmed officially that it was “eating its own dog food” by testing Kumo, which is designed as the next-generation search engine meant to replace Live Search.
However, the software company has so far denied that Kumo, a label that means either spider or cloud in Japanese, is the final name of the search service, emphasizing that it is actually meant to be nothing more than a codename. Regardless of the actual brand, Microsoft plans to debut the new Kumo search engine marketing push in June 2009. Users are in for a strategy that will extend from online, to TV, print and even radio. The software giant has so far failed to comment in any manner on the Kumo marketing campaign, or on its future plans for its search engine.
According to reports from sources close to the matter, Microsoft doesn't want to position Kumo as a Google or Yahoo killer, a move that would undoubtedly invite a comparison with the two competitors' products. Instead, Kumo is to be presented as reinventing the search wheel, delivering a smaller volume of search results but with increased relevance, and actually improving the user experience with a stronger focus on increasing relevance.
At the start of March 2009 Microsoft offered the first taste of Kumo to the public and informed employees that all Live Search traffic would be redirected to the new test search engine. The company delivered no indication as to when it planned to broaden the testing pool, however, the June 2009 start of the marketing campaign might offer a clue as to the launch deadline, even for a Beta variant of the service.
It remains to be seen whether Microsoft will brand its new search engine Kumo, or if it will opt for a different label. But in this regard, the marketing campaign is not necessarily aimed to take Microsoft's search engine out of the third place on the search engine market, but rather to introduce the new brand to the public.