May 29, 2009 by Matt Thomas
You’ll probably know by now, whether from this blog or one of the hundreds of others that have been covering this, that Microsoft have named their new search engine ‘bing.’ Now, to some that name may seem like just a random title picked out of the air at great expense by a marketing firm, however, to Mr. Steven Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft it is a clever marketing ploy rich in potential to become a household name.
Not convinced? Well, allow me to make his case. Bing is memorable one word brand that has strong connotations of that eureka moment when you find a solution to your problem – also the strip club in the Sopranos, but we’ll leave that aside for now. It also, and this is the important bit, has the potential to be used as a verb easily, i.e. ‘Why don’t you bing it,’ ‘I binged it and this came up.’
There’s also the plus that such a word cannot be easily misunderstood as it is essentially meaningless. As Steve Ballmer says, “It works globally, and doesn’t have negative, unusual connotations.”
Fair enough I guess but not everyone agrees, some experts are criticising the use of a word with such little meaning and pointing out that they will have to spend a lot of money creating any sort of brand association.
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