ASK Google...Mistaken Identity.

How funny is it when an advertising campaign backfires? Not very funny at all.

A little background first. Ask.com has been getting a lot of flack about their latest advertising campaign. The new campaign, a brainchild of Cripin, Porter & Bogusky, went a little "left of center" with some of the ad concepts. Many claim that the ads are a tad off color, slightly controversial or don't make sense at all. One such example can be seen here. Another billboard states; "The Algorithm Constantly Finds Jesus." Uhhh ok. I guess that means that Ask's algorithm is so good that that it knows where Jesus is.

So here is the funny part. According to the SEO RoundTable site, one of their contributors initiated a survey on Digg. The question was; "Is Ask.com's "The Algorithm" Campaign Really working?" 74% of the respondents actually thought that it was a campaign for Google.

I have to admit, I didn't quite get the campaign at first. The TV commercials were clever but were driven by humor that may escape most. At first glance the campaign appears to be a miserable failure for ASK. However, if the poorly received campaign was attributed to Google, it may not have been a complete disaster after all.