And in other “laughable corporate attempts to build brand equity through campaigns designed to intentionally genericize trademarked-but-tangential phrases that rhyme with ding-a-ling” news:
Microsoft’s marketing gurus hope that Bing will evoke neither a type of cherry nor a strip club on “The Sopranos” but rather a sound — the ringing of a bell that signals the “aha” moment when a search leads to an answer.
The name is meant to conjure “the sound of found” as Bing helps people with complex tasks like shopping for a camera, said Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of Microsoft’s online audience business group.
And if Bing turns into a verb like, say, Xerox, TiVo or, well, Google, that would be nice too. Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, said Thursday that he liked Bing’s potential to “verb up.” Plus, he said, “it works globally, and doesn’t have negative, unusual connotations.”
Mhmm. “Verb up.” I wanted to Twitter about leaving a Zing! on Bing, but the URL just redirects to decisionengine.com.
Microsoft’s Search for a Name Ends With a Bing [nyt]
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