Bing unveils jingle contest winner, and it's a doozy

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Screen grab from YouTube
No, he isn't the new Richard Simmons.

So a couple weeks ago, Microsoft invited users to create a theme song for its new Bing search engine. Maybe the marketing budget was getting a little tight. Who knows? Point is, we've now got the winning jingle for the first annual "Bing Goes the Internet" contest – a one-minute-plus music video created by a gentleman named Jonathan Mann.
And already, the rave middling reviews are pouring in.

"I would hesitate to call it the worst jingle ever, a title I would give to Toyota's 'Saved by Zero' TV ad campaign," writes the Seattle Times' Sharon Chan. "The 'Bing Goes the Internet' video looks a lot like an Oompa Loompa song and dance from Tim Burton's 2005 film remake of 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.'"

Meanwhile, Jared Newman isn't mincing words: "I get the feeling Microsoft is throwing pasta at the wall with its advertising ventures to see what sticks. And the commercials that haven't stuck, have stunk," Newman writes at PC World. But the harshest criticism came from Ben Parr at Mashable:

[W]e have one word for the well-produced Jonathan Mann video: creepy. It’s actually polished – probably because this guy records a song every single day on YouTube, which alone is a weird shtick. The winning video features Mr. Mann dancing around with silhouettes of himself on the Bing homepage. And the accompanying music…creepy as well. Seriously, aren’t jingles supposed to be cheery and light?!

But we'll let you judge for yourselves. Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, Jonathan Mann:

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