Where's Jeeves?

Overhype

from the not-quite-as-catchy-as-Where's-Waldo? dept

Search is hot again, thanks to the recent success of Google and Overture, leading to serious consolidation in the space with Yahoo buying up Inktomi and Overture (and via Overture, Altavista and Alltheweb). With Microsoft gearing up to enter the market, analysts are focused on the three horse race between Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Not happy at being ignored, it appears Ask Jeeves wants to remind people they still exist (possibly to get enough attention to be acquired). They’re starting up a new ad campaign, but will leave out their “mascot” butler from the ads. The idea (which seems like a bit of a stretch) is that people who are used to the butler will wonder what happened to him, and will go check out Ask Jeeves’ search engine. Consider it the Where’s Waldo strategy of marketing.