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Moon Doggie
The answer is service. Ask Jeeves, with
personality to
spare, wants to help create better web
experiences.
By Jennifer Saba
Staff Writer, Marketing Computers
June 2000 issue
"You'd have to be a curmudgeon not to like
Jeeves," says Robert Wrubel, CEO of Ask Jeeves, the
Emeryville, Calif.-based provider of a
natural language search engine. He, of course, is talking
about the character that not only serves as
the company spokesman in advertising but also is the
face of the engine itself. Jeeves is not only
an integral part of the Ask Jeeves brand image but, in
many respects, the character is the product.
At every point a customer touches the
company, Jeeves is there. He's in print ads in Fortune, and
human clones have served newspapers off a
silver tray on Wall Street. He's the dominant image on
the home page and is present on every page
thereafter. "People really interact with the site. They
write emails to Jeeves, saying 'Jeeves, help
me do this.' He really stands for something. You never
hear 'Let's go ask Microsoft,' " Wrubel says.
But a butler? What an antiquated notion to
apply to new media. Red tie, grey vest, pin stripes
running down his black jacket. It's all very
English-rendering Jeeves as a P.G. Wodehouse-esq
butler.
Even the concept of a search engine sounds
antiquated several years into the rise of the Net as a
media and business platform. Doesn't Yahoo!,
the first real Internet brand, have the category
locked up? And haven't most search engines
gone on to become destinations for much more than
search?
Yahoo! does have their core market wrapped
up. "Yahoo is the No. 1 search engine. They're
business is built on it. It's a fundamental
part of what they do," says Barry Parr, director of
consumer e-commerce at IDC in Mountain View.
Thus, if a firm's foundation is based on a
consumer-oriented search engine, which
Jeeves' origins are, and unless you're Yahoo!, which
Jeeves isn't, what's the next step to ensure
survival? What's the role of a search engine today?
Wrubel asserts that Jeeves appeals to
practical minds-people who want help with a task. In the
early days, the Internet was about creating a
presence on the web and garnering traffic. Today, the
Net increasingly is about providing services
and interacting with customers in a way that improves
their experience with your company.
"We are looking forward to what the Internet
should become. You want a servant rather than
another technology," Wrubel says. Instead of
spotlighting their tech, the company focuses on the
Jeeves experience.
"Our growth is testimony to our service. Two
years ago, the site wasn't in the top 1,000 domain
names on the Internet. Today it's the 14th
largest property on the web," Wrubel said in an interview
in late May. That's due largely to the
experience itself. They may go use other services like
Yahoo!, but a lot of people use Jeeves
because they can ask their questions in the way they know
how. People find it to be the path of least
resistance."
Certainly, Jeeves has come a long way, and,
maybe, that improvement is why Wrubel, 39, is so
chipper. Not in an annoying,
the-Internet-will-forever-change-the-world-
and-my-company-is-going-to-do-it way.
Chipper, as in pleasantly upbeat. He can get lost in a
conversation about his company, but he does
it without beating you over the head with New
Economy superlatives.
He has reason to be happy. PC Data, Reston,
Va., ranks Ask Jeeves No. 14 among web sites with
the most traffic. In the month of April, the
site garnered about 17 million unique visitors (a number
that spiked up when Ask Jeeves acquired
Direct Hit at the end of January). Media Metrix, New
York, ranks Ask Jeeves at No. 13 and No. 12
for the months of April and May respectively.
If the company has yet to turn a profit,
revenues are at least growing. In the quarter ended March
31, revenues were $17.8 million, up from $1.5
million in the same period a year ago. And Ask
Jeeves has built one of the most widely
recognized Internet brands.
Yet Wrubel is all too aware of the Internet's
rocky climate. Few tech stocks escaped the dramatic
drops in market caps in the spring, and Ask
Jeeves was no different. The company's stock began a
tumble in March from about $80 down to just
below $20 at press time, a far cry from the high of
$190 in November 1999.
That draft's gotta suck the wind out of
employee morale. To make matters worse, Ted Briscoe,
president and COO of Ask Jeeves and David
Hellier, vp of marketing, left in late May for Play
Streaming Media Group. Briscoe, who will be
CEO of Play Streaming, joined Ask Jeeves as CMO
in January 1999 and recruited Hellier since
the two men had worked together at Iomega, Roy,
Utah.
Does this hurt the company's image? "It never
helps, does it?" IDC's Parr says. So the Street is
nervous. But several analyst firms such as
Chase H&Q have so far maintained their "buy" ratings.
A report from Robertson Stephens in April
after the Q1 earnings announcement said Ask Jeeves
"should generate 50 percent annual secular
growth for the next three years."
Indeed, Ask Jeeves may be undervalued. The
company still has some work to do in explaining how
Ask Jeeves is much more than ad-supported
search for consumers at Ask.com. Ask Jeeves is
licensing their tech, syndicating their
content and championing the notion of a branded search
service to other businesses. The first
licensees like Dell Computer came on board in 1997, but Ask
Jeeves didn't put marketing muscle behind
their B2B side until last April.
The company on April 25 launched an ad
campaign targeted at corporate executives and launched
a site, www.corporate.ask.com. The company
wants to sell businesses more than their natural
language search platform; they want to
provide other services, such as live interactive chat, that
help companies create better customer
satisfaction and ROI from Internet initiatives.
And why not? The idea carries some merit.
Search engines, after all, are a kind of crude start to
customer service devices that will only
become more sophisticated over time, something in which
every e-commerce outfit should invest
heavily.
Wrubel plans to grow business solutions from
30 percent to 50 percent of total revenues. Of
course, he's not alone in the B2B search
game. Ask Jeeves faces determined competitors in the
likes of Soliloquy and Northern Light.
Still, the competition validates his vision.
Other outfits spied similar opportunity: Northern Light,
Cambridge Mass., makes at least 50 percent of
their revenue from building portals for partners like
Barnesandnobles.com and Billboard (a sister
pub to MC), says Susan Sterns, director of
marketing. Search services cut support costs
and improve customer experiences. A buyer, for
example, has a need; a search engine can
handle it, perhaps, saving a customer from making a
costly phone call.
"One of the biggest problems on the web right
now is that the user experience is woefully
inadequate," says Catherine Winchester,
president and CEO of Soliloquy, New York, a company
that sells natural language search functions
to firms like CNet. "Companies were focused in the
last few years on just getting [a site] up
and running. Now that this is working, they look to the
next step, which is a user's experience."
If any company can humanize customer service,
that is create an experience, why not Ask
Jeeves? The butler resonates with consumers,
and he'll resonate with business customers, too,
Wrubel says. "Brand values," he says, "carry
over instantly."
Jeeves is moving in the right direction,
because, really, at the end of the day, business people are
consumers. Marketing to them doesn't have to
be different. Now Wrubel and his team have to prove
it.
It was in April 1997 when David Warthen, Ask
Jeeves' CTO, and software developer Garrett Gruener
launched Ask Jeeves. Later that year, the
company started licensing their technology to
corporations under a "Powered by Jeeves"
program.
The two men shrewdly distinguished their
engine. What sets apart Ask Jeeves from other
consumer search engines like GoTo or
AltaVista, is that users can type in a question like they
would normally ask a real person: "What is
the capital of Brazil?" say, instead of "Brazil and
capital." People aren't restricted to typing
in search queries using obscure, non-intuitive methods
like a Boolean search.
"Our user is someone who's got better things
to do than to be on the Internet," Wrubel says. "They
tend to skew somewhat older, more affluent,
female."
It's a cool way to find information. The
promise of an instant response, however, might create
disappointment. Instead of just spitting out
the answer-Brasilia-Jeeves returns a set of links,
presumably links that have to do with Brazil.
Plus, answers hinge on the context of the words in a
question. When querying "who are the men that
sit in the balcony on The Muppet Show?" Jeeves
returns first with links to civil rights
sites, based on "sit in." Natural language isn't yet perfect, and
users still have to think about the way they
phrase questions. Putting "The Muppet Show" in the
beginning of a question, for example, gets
better results.
"They came up with a natural language search
facility that works well," says IDC's Parr. "But they
face a challenge from Google and AltaVista,
which are quite good and can answer most people's
questions extremely effectively." Also, Ask
Jeeves can't scale as the web expands as quickly as
some others, Parr says. Ask Jeeves, based on
tech and human editors, is not as scalable as
pure-tech engines like both AltaVista and
Google.
Yet Wrubel, who joined the company in 1998,
and his team don't harbor any delusions that they
have the best search engine on the web. "It's
not about the greatest technology. You have to have
a good product, but it doesn't have to be the
best. It's the total experience that's important," says
Heather Staples, vp of corporate
communications for Ask Jeeves.
It's never just about the technology. So the
company focuses on the aggressive brand building of
their butler. As you might expect, Ask
Jeeves' headquarters is full of butlers. A six-foot cutout in
the lobby, a dwarfish one tucked in an
obscure corner. All of them slightly portly and bald. He's a
white, middle-aged caricature of a man. Mouth
slightly upturned, not exactly a grin, but friendly
enough.
The character literally ads a face to the
company's search service, something AltaVista, Google
and GoTo don't have. "He's human. He's not a
bot. He's not perfect," says David Hellier, the former
vp of marketing.
The butler delivers on the company's mission
of "humanizing the Internet through real-time web
interaction." The creation of a true
personality goes a step beyond most brand building. Granted,
defining brand essence is a slippery process.
But consider a contrast with Amazon, a brand that
clearly denotes certain traits-good service,
wide selection. But users don't identify with Amazon
directly. You don't catch yourself speaking
to Amazon. Jeeves, however, promotes such a
connection.
For all the boasting and success about the
butler character, it's hard to believe that Jeeves-name
and all-almost got the ax. "We were always
convinced that people were going to the URL 'ask
cheese' or 'ask Jesus,'" Wrubel says.
Sure, those fears sound goofy. But, remember,
the Internet grew from a quirky medium to serious
business in a few years. Business-minded web
firms quickly changed whimsical URLs to names
conjuring nothing but boredom. You know
exactly what you can buy at Drugstore.com, for
example, but you have no sense of the
experience.
The staff worried that the name was too silly
or not serious enough or didn't have digital e-conomy
new world cha ching! So Wrubel rounded up
executives and hashed out the pros and cons of
keeping Jeeves, Jeeves.
Obviously, the butler remains. In a sense, he
carries the entire search engine on his tray-ready
hand. "Garrett and David were totally
brilliant or lucky or something in between," Hellier says.
Their timing is on the mark. Characters
representing companies that dominated advertising 30 to
40 years ago, like Charlie the Tuna and the
Jolly Green Giant, are getting some fresh company.
The concept is resurgent: Pets.com's sock
puppet, Taco Bell's Chihuahua and, from a company
closer to Ask Jeeves' business, MySimon's
Simon.
MySimon, a shopping and comparison site based
in Santa Clara, Calif., recently purchased by
CNet, is also trying to establish a
personality. "We came to the conclusion that people don't really
care about technology. Instead, it's about
what can you do for me," says Brian Rolfe, director of
corporate communications at MySimon.
What separates the Jeeves butler from other
characters, however, is the fact that people don't
really believe the sock puppet will deliver
dog food or the Chihuahua will dish out a gordita. In
contrast, people respond to Jeeves,
addressing notes to him.
"He's providing a service for them. He's not
talking about the service. That's a big difference," says
Alan Reighard, a partner at DSW Partners, Ask
Jeeves' ad agency, based in Salt Lake City. "I
don't think a lot of people understand how to
build a brand. Most advertising talks about the benefit.
It stops short of really reaching higher to
core values. Jeeves has succeeded in reaching in to the
emotional level and surprising people."
Still, the company has to be careful, or they
run the risk of making Jeeves the star. The Pets.com
puppet, for example, is winning many hearts,
but Pets.com as a company is a different matter
altogether. The Chihuahua, meanwhile, hasn't
boosted sales of soft tacos.
"Jeeves is there to help get things done, not
to hog the limelight," Hellier says. Like all good
butlers, Jeeves is there when you need him,
silent when you don't (unlike that annoying, animated
paper clip in Microsoft Office and the short
lived Bob). Successful characters truly help users and
do it in a non-obtrusive manner.
Ask Jeeves and their agency partners also
feared that the butler could alienate people, since he
represents something that could be
misconstrued as snobbish. They carefully crafted his look to
avoid that pitfall, says Hellier. Alfred from
Batman was too stand-offish. Robert Guillaume's Benson
was too sarcastic. They settled on a mix from
the movies Heaven Can Wait and The Parent Trap.
With that combo, Jeeves can project a host of
traits: "He's personal and friendly and offers you
what you need. He doesn't have an opinion.
He's not judging. He's a trusted companion," says
Steven Donaldson, president and creative
director of BGDI, a Berkeley-based design and
communications firm that counts Ask Jeeves as
a client.
The company used the image of a real man in
early ads but moved to a cartoon rendering to
maintain consistency, from the Jeeves on the
web site to the butler in offline ventures the company
is launching. "Good branding starts before
you hire an ad agency," says DSW's Reighard. "He's
the product. We just brought him to life."
Reighard isn't exaggerating. Take what they
call the "butler blasts." Near the time of the Academy
Awards, the company sent out a battalion of
old white men dressed as Jeeves. They scampered
about serving bottled water on silver trays.
In New York, the butlers took to Wall Street and passed
out copies of The Wall Street Journal and The
New York Times, which contained the first phase of
Ask Jeeves' business campaign.
The unusual offline branding didn't stop
there. Ask Jeeves also decided to try the Chiquita banana
way of marketing, putting stickers on fruit.
They tested 15 million apples and blew out later to 60
million oranges. The questions on stickers
next to Jeeves matched the media: "Why is New York
called the Big Apple?" Hellier, meanwhile,
made sure that Jeeves would have the answers (i.e.
links). Questions about oranges skyrocketed
by 30 percent after the campaign.
And don't forget the Macy's Thanksgiving Day
Parade last November, in which Jeeves and
Pets.com's puppet were the first Internet
characters to appear in the parade. More recently, on
June 1, the company introduced a series of
books "designed to increase consumer loyalty and
reach new audiences." Culling content from
the four million questions asked on the site each day,
the company will publish three books this
summer. The first is Jeeves, I'm Bored: 25 Internet
Adventures for Kids. For adults, the company
will follow with Just Curious, Jeeves in June and
Jeeves, I Need Help in August.
Ask Jeeves has also inked a deal with Michael
Ovitz'-the agent and Hollywood mogul-Lynx
Technology Group and talent agency, Artist
Management Group, to take Jeeves to the masses in
the form of an animated cartoon series, and
possibly other merchandising deals in the future.
Such efforts could undermine attempts to not
let Jeeves "hog the limelight." But execs at Ask
Jeeves and their partners say they're
careful. "Every time we use [Jeeves] he's solving somebody's
problems. It's a rare occurrence that he's
just a logo," says Muffy Ferro, vp and creative director at
DSW.
Depending on the media or genre of a
publication, Ask Jeeves tailors queries. So, for instance, in
People Magazine, the query could be, "Where
can I find information on Brad Pitt?" And the ads
show the interface of the site, as well as
Jeeves.
In all advertising-with a total budget of
about $45 million-from TV spots to oranges, Jeeves is
present. The butler has appeared on cable and
spot TV and in print media from People to the Red
Herring. The marketing mix is now about 20
percent offline and 80 percent online, although that
balance is moving toward a 50/50 split.
Instead of using a different brand in B2B
efforts, Ask Jeeves hopes to carry over the equity they've
built in the consumer arena. DSW's Reighard
is still surprised that some people don't get that
business and consumer audiences are often the
same. "It's like all these people who wake up in
the morning, they're the consumer. When they
walk out the door, they're Mr. Businessman."
Some analysts agree. "The fact that they're
using the same brand makes a lot of sense," says
James Vogtle, director of e-commerce research
at The Boston Consulting Group, Toronto. "The
B2B market was always an important one to
them. But they've proved it out through consumers,
making it a much easier sell to businesses.
It's not that dissimilar from Inktomi. They started out
with their own search engine. Now their
technology is embedded in all search engines. It's the
same kind of model."
The business ads the company is running in
pubs like Red Herring is consistent with consumer
advertising. Jeeves sits at a table for a
board meeting, Jeeves takes a question in a call center. The
image of the cartoon in the real-world
settings is almost laughable. Yet the work manages to both
grab attention and make messages clear-a feat
most B2B advertising from other companies
doesn't accomplish.
Playing in both consumer and business
markets, however, may prove a difficult balancing act. "I
think they're competing against their own
customers potentially," Soliloquy's Winchester says.
Soliloquy, which uses the tag: "Humanizing
e-commerce" nonetheless welcomes the Ask Jeeves'
consumer work. "Ask Jeeves has been wonderful
for us, because it has proven that Internet users
want to interact with natural languages," she
says.
Broad Daylight president and CEO Louise
Kirkbride echoes such sentiments: "Jeeves is validating
the idea of answering questions on a web
site," she says. Broad Daylight, Santa Clara, Calif.,
helps companies build, manage and distribute
questions and answers--and counts Space.com and
former presidential candidate Sen. John
McCain as clients. "We bring together real questions with
real people with real answers," Kirkbride
says. Still, she knows the power of consumer branding.
Broad Daylight goes directly against Jeeves
with their new "You've been Jeeved" campaign, which
pushes the message that their technology
works better, faster.
The jabs are fierce, since the opportunity is
great. After all, a reliable search service is key to
creating customer satisfaction. "When someone
is on the war path to get something done, they hit
the search function," says Artie Wu, CEO and
founder of Vividence, a San Mateo company that
evaluates customer experiences on web sites.
"What we found is that upwards of 70 to 80 percent
of users go to search."
Ask Jeeves competitors downplay the butler
brand and tout better technology, because they
believe technology matters more to businesses
than to consumers. If technology doesn't perform,
then users don't have a good experience.
"When they run into problems with satisfaction, it's a
death spiral," Wu says.
Jeeves, however, shouldn't turn in his tray
yet. The combo of tech and human editors might be
better suited to the vertical nature of B2B
sites than to broad consumer sites. "To use their
methodology in a much more defined space can
add a lot," says IDC's Parr. "The technology they
have is much more applicable to a
business-to-business [play]."
If strictly-B2B competitors express doubt
about Ask Jeeves' ability to sell to businesses, the
company already has a proven track record,
counting 110 companies, from Martha Stewart to
Radio Shack, as customers.
Dell Computers was one of the first companies
to sign up with Ask Jeeves in late 1997. "We
wanted someone we could influence and work
with. At the time the number of options for natural
language search engines was very limited,"
says Ganesh Lakshminarayanan, acting director of
support technology online at Dell.
The direct marketer saw the importance in
adding a human touch to their web site, "to take away
the fear" often involved when purchasing
computers, he says. Dell's human touch comes in the
form of Ask Dudley, their own character named
after a real tech support employee who's rated by
customers as one of the most effective
technicians.
Dell builds their own database from which the
engine draws answers. "All the knowledge base
documents are created by Dell technicians.
Ask Jeeves is just the enabler," says
Lakshminarayanan. Dudley exists, because Dell
wants to limit the number of calls placed to their
tech center. "We're getting about 165,000
questions every week," he says. Of those questions,
about 60 percent of them are answered
successfully in the first response.
Ultimately, Ask Jeeves' success hinges on
providing such improved customer service to a growing
number of corporations. The brand still
matters in making the initial sales contract. "But the
renewals will depend on performance, not on
the brand," says the BCG's Vogtle.
Ask Jeeves claims a 100 percent renewal
rate-a figure based on only three companies so far:
Toshiba, Micron and Web TV. Others could
follow once contracts begin to expire.
For now, Ask Jeeves must keep momentum going,
a task made somewhat difficult without a lead
marketing executive. "I think we've been very
successful
and we've built a very strong brand," the
departing Hellier says. "My leaving had nothing to do with
Jeeves. I have nothing but good thoughts
about Jeeves, and I believe in the company." Wrubel
hopes businesses will feel the same.
Keep on truckin'
- Moon Doggie -
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