Microsoft may have finally killed its "Scroogled" campaign

Microsoft's campaign against Google's products and privacy policies have used the "Scroogled" brand for well over a year. Now those efforts may finally be coming to an end. Comments made this weekend on an online forum by a Microsoft executive suggest that the company is closing the doors on the controversial marketing and advertising campaign.

According to ZDNet's Derrick Connell, the Corporate Vice President in charge of the Bing Experience team at Microsoft, hosted an AMA session on his Yabbly site over the weekend. It appears that all of his answers have since been deleted, but ZDNet did manage to reprint his response to a question regarding his own views of the Scroogled campaign.

According to Connell, the marketing effort was started as a way to "bring attention to some activities that we didn't like as a company." That has included attacks on Google for scanning email content on Gmail to generate ads, and how Google Shopping search results are influenced by paid ads.

Connell then wrote:

It is tricky as you want to raise awareness and do it in a fun way. I think we achieved that goal, and changed some policies, and we are now done with the campaign. Mostly I feel proud that we decided to do it regardless of how we might be perceived.

ZDNet contacted Microsoft for comment and received a very vague response back, stating:

We are always evaluating and evolving our marketing campaigns. There are times when we use our marketing to highlight differences in how we see the world compared to competitors, and the Scroogled campaign is an example of this. Moving forward, we will continue to use all the right approaches and tactics when and where they make sense.

It's important to note that Mark Penn, who launched the "Scroogled" campaign in late 2012 while he served as Microsoft's Corporate Vice President in charge of Strategic and Special Projects, is now working at the company's chief strategy officer. That means he no longer has any direct control over Microsoft's marketing and ad campaigns.

Source: ZDNet | Image via Microsoft