Do me a favor and think about your favorite products and/or services and ask yourself this simple question:

• How did you hear about them?

Does the answer to this question remain consistent or inconsistent throughout the years?  Do you find your preference for a particular product or service to be a reflection upon your upbringing? (i.e. our family has always bought Brand Y, so I continue to buy Brand Y)  Perhaps your friends’ habits play a major role in your consumer activity?  Or maybe you discover products and services through a wide variety of channels and outlets.  Obviously, there are a ton of ways to captivate consumers’ attention. What I’m wondering is:  Which is the most effective?

I raise this question in direct response to Microsoft, and their attempt to revive their search brand with Bing.com.  The fact that Microsoft is going head on against Google is eye-opening enough, but what really stood out for me was their marketing budget.  It is estimated that Microsoft will spend a whopping $80MM to $100MM in marketing efforts alone!  Believe it or not, this figure does not include the hundreds of millions they will likely spend in partnership deals with HP and Dell in making Bing.com their products’ default search portal.

Here’s an example of where some of that money did go [video below]:

Since Google is the unquestionable titan in this particular domain, I immediately thought back to my first encounter with the search giant about 10 years ago.  I was in the seventh or eighth grade when I noticed that my friend was using something besides Yahoo! or Altavista or Excite.  It was this insanely simplistic homepage with just a few words and lot of white space.  I was immediately intrigued and have used Google exclusively from that point forward.

The point is, there was no advertising campaign or multi-million dollar budget involved in grabbing my attention.  My conversion was a direct result of something 100% word of mouth.  Similarly, online services like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were introduced to me through similar viral efforts.

This brings me to the heart of the matter:  What efforts are most effective in captivating consumers?  Is it viral or is it commercial?

We’ve all witnessed how reaching an audience has become easier and more affordable through the constant advancements in technology.  Blogs, microblogs, and social networks are just some examples of the many consumer-driven publishing platforms that are revolutionizing the process of creating and distributing content to the masses.  We are experiencing the beginning of a much flatter and more democratic media surge, where an individual has the ability to reach an audience just as easily as Company X.  But just as the landscape is changing for the content providers, consumers have developed a new way of being captivated.

As a consumer, how do you prefer to learn about a brand, product, or service?  Does the answer depend upon the particular market segment?  (online vs. physical / free vs. paid / product vs. service )  Do you use different techniques for different scenarios?

Tell me what you think.