Asking For Jeeves!
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I am finding myself doubting something recently reported. Allegedly, Ask.com users from the UK are interested in seeing a return to Jeeves, despite the well branded butler being retired sometime back. The idea is that bringing back Jeeves is all important, despite the fact that he is merely a logo, little more.
When I first heard of this, I failed to see how adding Jeeves back to Ask.com, for UK users, translates into any sort of perceived value whatsoever? Then I learned that Jeeves was serving more as a PR focal point than something that was truly adding value to the product. In truth, it was adding value to the brand itself.
At the end of the day, I am not living on the right side of the pond to have a clear understanding as to why those on the other side are so interested in seeing Jeeves returning home. Despite me not being able to climb into the heads of UK Ask users, I am a bit skeptical as to how successful Jeeves or anything else Ask adds is going to translate into taking back search users from Google?

One Comment
Chris
April 21st, 2009
at 1:30am
OK, so the UK office of Ask.com sent out a press release to announce their relaunch/rebrand of the site.
I don’t think they’d be the first in corporate PR history to include some research “showing” that the marketing move they’ve just made was “in response to customer demand”.
Would be surprised if anyone bought that.