Another Day, Another Agency Research Project: WPP and Microsoft Partner to Study Search for Branding

Search for branding campaigns? It's been done, but search is certainly not the go-to method for brand building. Indeed, the majority of advertisers still question whether search marketing can be effective for branding efforts at all.

WPP and Microsoft aim to figure that out. And, surely, the lately very Bing-centric Microsoft has an agenda to prove search is a fantastic brand building medium. According to a WPP statement, the firms are partnering to determine "The correlation between brand awareness and search efficacy; How search engines are changing consumer behavior; How social marketing impacts the search for brands; [and] The connections between paid search and brand development."

Three WPP agencies, branding-focused Brand Asset Consulting, direct response agency Wunderman, and Web strategy and SEO firm ZAAZ, will guide the research project.