I am often heartened by the strangest things – a scone for brekkie, when the machine at work spits out moccaccino instead of cappuccino (when the service guy swaps milk powder for chocolate powder), someone giving me a crème egg (despite the quality of the chocolate)…. I was heartened to discover the culprit behind the ad campaign that sent me a free t-shirt (that will only fit me when I lose another 100 lbs or so) was Ask.com, my favourite underdog of search. Sort of. While some of you guys (pointing no fingers) were enraptured by MissDewey.com (and possibly looking up her porn back catalogue), I was trying to win a moped on Ask.com and discovering new avenues to waste away hours - by clicking on random related searches.

As a long-time Ask.com user therefore, I was delighted to (receive my free t-shirt that only fits small children…NOT) discover that the people who were plastering the underground (the subway system in London, UK), painting on the street and projecting images on Parliament, were Ask.com Their ad campaign was designed to look like some underground network was trying to start a rebellion against information being controlled by one company (how about the fact that almost all news outlets worldwide are owned by a small handful of corporations…?). The unfortunate part is that the feeling of deception and outrage have seemingly overcome the realisation that information is controlled by one company (sort of). Sometimes we are happier in our illusions.

The ad posters are simple white background with black images and red and black text with the Ask.com button (sans Ask.com text). The posters are designed to make people think about who is serving up their search results by asking if one company should really control the web’s information. The site itself encourages people to try alternate search engines – even live.com. The television commercials – designed to look as though someone has hijacked the signal - have a great underground movement feel to them. The set reminds me a little too much of Johnny Mnemonic, and they seem to be trying to emulate the underground movements in movies a little too much.

Will this convert people away from Google? I highly doubt it. The clear deception of the public who were duped in to believing this was a real underground movement, only to find out it was a search engine, are more likely to be put off than to switch. Google is used in interesting ways and in the UK, it is used for 75% of all searches. In fact, it is now used as a way of accessing a website by putting the URL in to the search box. When attempting to access a site, a significant number of people (3 out of 5 in one study) will enter the URL in to Google’s search box. If the site has not yet been indexed, the user assumes the site does not exist. Such is the power and market penetration of Google.

Ask.com feels they have nothing to lose – in fact, they do. They have 4.6% of all searches done in the UK to lose, and the goodwill of searchers like me. They may have misjudged reaction to this campaign. Not even going by the website comments, the feeling expressed by friends and colleagues is that this campaign is a real turn off. I thought it was cute but even I was slightly put off by it, and I’m an Ask.com fan. I feel they have lost a lot through this campaign and may have made a huge mistake. If you’ve seen the adverts, I’d love to hear your opinion.