I got pinged yesterday from some folks at microsoft asking if I would be willing to post their new live search ads and take feedback from the ShoeMoney readers.
I have not had time to watch them myself but I was told Danny Sullivan said they were the best search engines commercials he has seen in a long time. (honestly I don’t remember any search engine advertising for a longtime)
Here they are! Vote below!
Video: Live Search 1 – Plucky powered skates
Video: Live Search 2 – Meet Malcolm Dewsbury
Video: Live Search 3 – The gossip jockeys
Video: Live Search 4 – The hunt for saucy hotel snaps
Video: Live Search 5 – Fancy a picnic darling?
Video: Live Search 6 – A terrible secret!
Video: Live Search 7 – DJ Snizzle and his baby moma Ethel
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Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2415 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
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{ 39 comments… read them below or add one }
I wonder if Danny Sullivan has Plucky powered skates. While they’re all pretty corny videos, I liked number seven “mail from DJ bubble wrap” DJ Snizzle. (For Shizzle)
All are too long, some too silly without being clever. Good concept, well produced, but need to be half as long or even shorter.
My fav is motorized skates, humorous dialog and damn cool skates.
Wow, you left out the option to vote for none. These ads are horrible. If MSN was trying to brand Live Search as a dated, nuts and bolts, POS, then they succeeded. I would avoid Live Search after seeing these ads.
wow these are all terrible and all too long.
and that’s NOT an accordian, its a concertina. someone should have “live searched” before writing the script.
The idea of using WWII era footage is pretty good, but they all need to be shorter and get to one punch line quickly and get out. 30 seconds max I think. None of them are effective as is.
No none option ?
Nice videos there
Not sure if MS need to improve their SERPs or advertise more. If they want advice I would say they should improve their SERPs first.
Plucky Power Skates has my vote! Nice ads.
I like the change from hotmail to live. I expected something HOT. I would have liked to see something fresh, new, crisp, something 2020ish. But then again I don’t advertise for a fortune 500 company. If you guys at Microsoft need help ask me. I would shoot you some ideas for free.
Oh I didn’t vote for any of them.
Where is the option for ‘None of the Above’ ?
Too long
watched 30secs then got borred.
The “plucky” 1st ad was nauseating….watched it until the man and his wife were cruising down a suburban street on HIS skates, and he consulted the live map in his big hat….did they actually pay some agency to come up with this crapola?
I randomly tried to watch a few of these but none held my attention. Too long, too boring. They should go back to the drawing board
I can’t believe they actually paid for those crap ads. This is what happens when a company gets so big that the original players don’t have a real hand in day to day business.
Hopefully Microsoft will read the feedback here and go back to the drawing board because going retro with long ads is not what the 21st century is about.
They all seem to be pretty lame, with the amount of resources that a big company like that has you would think they could come up with something better than these. But if I had to pick the best of the worst I would choose No. 7.
Who is their target audience? Old British chaps? I love British humor, but these are just not that funny, and are mostly confusing.
My vote was for number 6.
It grabbed my attention right away with a booger joke. (gets me every time) I loved the style of humor and I think its the only one that would actually not make me mad to find out I was watching a 2 min commercial.
If they want to make “videos” they either have to come up with MUCH better short stories, or compilations of stuff people want to see.
THIS IS WHATS GOING TO BEAT GOOGLE. ALL I HAVE SAY IS OMG….
GO BACK TO DRAWING BOARD MSN PLEASE…
RD
Corny is right. They are pretty good though.
I wonder who they are targetting with those ads? Certainly seems it is not the techie-type crowd that is reading Shoemoney.
I couldn’t watch them all, but the ones I did watch were pretty bad, won’t be voting for any of them as a favourite.
Great productions, but definitely too long.
I don’t like retro commercials, sorry.
Creativity -good, interesting, curious
Communication of message – very poor, too long. message diluted by video content. Narration voice – annoying
Potential effectiveness – minimal at best.
Overall – boring, inane
Can’t believe this came from a professional agency
They’re not meant to be ads as such but more a little selection of skits. Danny saw them at an event we had in London and thought they were funny. Us Brits think they’re quirky too…..just a bit of fun!
OK–that is better, and good to know.
if I were at a conference, and someone presented one of these as an intro to their presentation, I would be amused ..it would definitely appreciate the effort that MS put into grabbing my attention and i would REMEMBER the experience. Maybe overall they are still a bit too long, but I am impressed w/ the quirkiness and continuity of the productions.
Just don’t make me sit thru any of them twice.
Thanks for the info you added.
I like the jockey one the best …
Keep the video production people but fire the writers.
boring….. . ..im ad blind, it burns oh it the pain.
DJ Snizzle of course!!!!
Voted on Plucky Power Skates, nice ads .
I like the Terrible Secrets!
I like the Plucky Power stakes. They get my vote for sure!
Now did you get payed per each time we viewed these videos or did they pay just for the post alone?
Microsoft will have to do a lot more then a few nice ads. Well done ad agency
didn’t have the patients to watch them. I did watch the skate one though. Nice.
microsoft wants many things but they are giving less. when it is more you have to pay more.
I am going to agree that they are all too long and inefective!
I voted for the first one, looks funny.