Ask's campaign in the UK — the also-ran search engine paid for fliers and underground ads challenging Google's "information monopoly" — has been an embarrassment for the IAC company. The guerrilla style of the creative, work of the Fallon agency, is meant to be tongue-in-cheek; but, because Ask's role as sponsor was disguised, the attack on Google simply looks sneaky. The latest setback: inspired by a consumer backlash, most notably on a forum which Ask had hoped would debate Mountain View's power, the Wall Street Journal devotes today's advertising column to Ask missteps. This is probably discouraging for any marketers planning to take on Google; but it shouldn't be. Negative campaigns, in business as in politics can be highly effective. But they only work if wavering consumers are clear what they would be switching to. Which, in Ask's case, they aren't. Later, today, the campaign that Ask should run.

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