If you’re Bing, how do you solve a problem like Google? They’ve rolled up their sleeves in the internet search engine battle…

Google have already trampled all over Yahoo en route to becoming the powerhouse of internet searches, but can a bit of bling help Bing make headway against the toughest of foes? The man in charge of making Bing a success is Eric Hadley and his annual budget is $100 million. But far from just throwing money at it, Hadley has a different approach for Bing and one that may just bear fruit. Hadley is attempting to make Bing cool.

Gathering at The Delano Hotel in Miami’s South Beach, late one October evening, a stellar ensemble of Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Venus Williams and an assortment of other A list celebrities look on as Hadley addresses them. However, this is no boring lecture on how Bing is a millisecond faster than Google in searches. Leading the crowd over to the Delano’s famous skinny pool, the underwater lights come on to reveal one of modern lifes most insightful works: the lyrics to Jay-Z’s ‘Big Pimpin’ printed right there on the pool floor. This event is to mark the official launch of a marketing campaign by Hadley and the World’s coolest rapper to promote his autobiography, Decoded, through Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

The showbiz route is the one that Hadley believes Bing must take to become relevant in arguably one of the toughest markets to crack. “The other guy is a technology play,” Hadley says, not referring to Google by name. “We want to be a consumer brand and make Bing relevant to people’s everyday lives, and the way to do that is to connect through pop culture.” Cool indeed.

But it’s not just a case of hanging around with random cool pop stars, hoping internet users notice….

A stickler for statistics, Hadley has pointed out that the Jay-Z deal was driven by research showing that the demographics of his biggest fans, 18-24 year olds and African Americans, are more active online searchers than other groups. He also quoted data showing that 18-24-year-olds consume 61 percent more search pages online than average and African-American users view 29 percent more search pages. Affluent African Americans are more likely to use Bing over Google, one of the few demographic groups to do so, and those who listen to Hip Hop weekly consume 19 percent more search pages monthly than others. So it seems that a bit of Hip Hop culture may key to increasing Bings market share.

Bing registered 21.4 million new search users in its first year and has increased steadily since then. Last month users conducted 1.92 billion searches on Bing for 11.5 percent of the market, growth of 7 percent, 0.3 percent more than any other search engine. Google still owns 66.3 percent of the market, with 11 billion searches but Bing is making decent headway. By aligning itself with cool acts like Jay-Z and brands like Victoria’s Secret, Bing might have just found a way to make progress against the toughest opposition out there.

Watch this space Google….