[download id="undefined"][download id="undefined"]Life is a search, quite metaphorically so, but it now pays!

It would be quite interesting to know how will Bill Gates still earn pots of money by offering cash- back rebates to its search engine customers. [download id="null"] Microsoft in a tardy aggressive move has launched Live Search in competition to Google.
This launch, said Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, is a way of “simplifying the tasks and rewarding the consumers and advertisers for their engagement in a major way.”

In essence, Microsoft wants to incentivise users of Live Search. As you key in a search, the Live Search tool gives you a list of list of prices with “compare prices” button and cash- back rebates associated with the search. This is applicable on commerce- centric seraches.Marketers determine how much they’re willing to pay to acquire a buyer for a particular product and pay Microsoft that fee only when someone makes a purchase. But instead of pocketing that money, Microsoft offers it back to users in the form of a rebate.
Clever, considering Return of investment as the ultimate marketer’s manna.

Go experience it Live here

Of course, we all know that or at least claim to. A nielsen survey below is a good reference point.

According to the above data, if you really want to do word-of-mouth marketing well, you’re better off investing your attention on the boring stuff, like product performance, employee training, quality, and especially customer service.

Umm..do I hear dissent brewing…?

****UPDATE****

Guess the brands are listening in!

Product innovation back on the agenda at unilever

By Influx Insights – posted by Ed Cotton

At a time when product performance now trumps marketing spin, Unilever’s Chairman is looking for more product innovation from the giant multinational.

According to an interview in the Times of London.

“Michael Treschow thinks there is not enough “wow” at Unilever.

The Swedish chairman likes inventions, gadgets and new whizz-bang things. He has been in his job for a year and, after a shake-up and streamlining of the top team at the Anglo-Dutch food and soap company, he wants the men in white coats to work faster, creating an assembly line of new products.

The marketing is good, the selling is good, it’s the product line that needs attention, he says. “The single most important thing is that we speed up our innovation machine, which means that we bring more highly appreciated products to the consumer so that they say, ‘Wow, this is really something I would like to have’,” he says.”

Can we now expect increases in R&D spends as packaged goods companies go back in search of product performance and difference?

Solutions|Digitas is India’s leading agency of the digital age and this blog is an amalgamation of digital ideas – or masala, as we call them – picked up by various experts and individuals honing & practicing their marketing mettle at the organization.

That’s not all! Going forward, we invite industry experts to join the conversation and enrich our collective knowedge base that will take forward Indian advertising & marketing in the new digital age.