Available for your viewing pleasure

Mar 23, 2010 11:21 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft’s second video commercial aimed at users in the United Kingdom is now live (users can watch it embedded at the bottom of this article). The advertisement is an example of the overall marketing strategy designed to help boost the popularity of the Bing search/decision engine. In this regard, the message transmitted to end users is the same as in the United States. Microsoft is essentially promising that Bing will filter all the overload from search, and help users not only get answers to their queries, but also make decisions.

The Redmond company in fact did not only rebrand Live Search as Bing in the first half of 2009, but it also replaced search engine with decision engine. The second UD video advert is just another piece of the software giant’s “Bing and decide” campaign, albeit one of the funniest ones yet. While the first Bing video ad for the UK featured a more primitive approach to getting the message through, the latest references a classic of the cinema.

As it is usually the case with Bing ads, people around the main character, designed so that all searchers can relate to them, start offering random conversations, jumping from topic to topic, and spitting out incoherencies. Microsoft’s metaphor is not exactly misplaced, as search-engine results more often than not are full of nonsense. This time around, the conversation strays so far that it actually ends up referencing a key point in the plot of Taxi Driver.

Directed by Martin Scorsese, and featuring Robert DeNiro and a young Jodie Foster, Taxi Driver is considered by many a cinematographic masterpiece, making its mark in more than one way, and being the source of the famous, ‘You talking' to me? You talking' to me?' This is precisely the phrase cited by one of the characters in the commercial, albeit it is guaranteed to have the exact opposite effect on the audience, compared to when it was uttered by DeNiro.