Our favorite jingle guy is at it again. Jonathan Mann, who TechCrunch readers will best know as the guy behind the awful Bing jingle, has released another new video (as he does every day), this time to serenade the children of Keith Valley Middle School who recently performed his Bing jingle. “It’s kind of creepy,” Mann admitted at the time, but he was happy to see his work live on, so he came up with this gem.
But this latest video almost had a very different tone. “I thought about writing them an anti-corporate anthem, something they could raise their tiny, furious fists to, but ultimately decided on this,” Mann tells us. Too bad, because that would be been awesome. It could have been “Another Brick In The Wall [Part 2]” for the 21st Century.
Representatives for Bing also wrote us after our “torture” post to point out the backstory about the students singing the Bing jingle. Apparently, they decided to do it on their own — or rather, their teachers decided to make them do it. Still, it’s very creepy. And as a number of readers pointed out, a little bit too much like Jesus Camp (trailer below Mann’s new video and the students singing his song).
That is definition of branding.
When you first reported on this, you wrote
“As you can see in the video below, Microsoft has forced a bunch of middle schoolers in Pennsylvania to learn and perform Mann’s Bing song. ”
And now that you’ve been proved wrong, not so much as an apology or a retraction?
Pathetic.
nothing have been proven. it’s really not clear why they did this. and rather odd.
@MG
hey!! MicroSoft !!! leave us kids alone!!
all in all, its just another “BING” on the wall…!!
I commented it yesterday and today u have post on this. Cool.
heh, sorry i missed that. a good thought for sure
@Jonathan
What software do you use for audio editing? Can you see yourself cleaning up your appearance/bad habits and doing some PR work for MS?
u do know that apple and google are corporates as well, right?
really?
that makes sense
hey,
someone pls get a job to this guy, recession seems to be creeping over him
Clearly an attempt to fake an online meme – schools don’t just happen to have hundreds of Microsoft Tees lying around, and schools don’t allow their students to become billboards without some serious incentive.
Mann is also a lot more calculating than his “whacky” persona would suggest – deals have been done here, money has changed hands.
Exactly. Microsoft had to have provided them with all of those T-Shirts. And mayyyybe a few hundreds (or thousands) of dollars fell into the boxes with the T-Shirts.
I wonder if they had planned it all along.
Step 1: Hold Youtube Jingle Contest
Step 2: Pick person with most subscribers
Step 3: Have kids sing jingle, post on Youtube
Step 4: $$$$$$$ PROFIT $$$$$$$$
I wish this were true. The only money I recieved was for winning the damn jingle contest, a $500 American Express gift card. A GIFT CARD, no less. Microsoft, one of the biggest corporations ever, and they give me a $500 gift card. Anyway, outside of that, I didn’t see a dime. They’re free now, per the terms of the contest, to do whatever the hell they want with the jingle (and “dance”) I composed in a half hour. Such are the wonders of this crowd-sourced world we live in.
I wonder when Coke or Pepsi will do something along the same lines. Er, I mean, when a middle school will “do it on their own” and then contact Coke or Pepsi for a truck load of shirts.
Bing goes the internet.
Can someone get hold of a parent to one of all the childs involved, what do they think of the branding?
This Jesus Camp-trailor is scaring the shit out of me… Reeeeally much.
SHAMEFUL… How could he do it… Singing and dancing like that… And I pity the students from Keith Valley Middle school for being involved with such a guy… Poor children… It will sure leave a crack in their childhood life
looking for a parent, well here I am, the kids had fun, it was fine, really. Though they may inadvertently see all the hyper-criticism, but guess they’ll learn something from that too. So chill, they’re unscarred.
watching this video felt like slowly getting stabbed in the face.
This guys looks like Gary Kasparov, LOL.