With the help of Agency.com San Francisco, search engine Ask.com has launched a multichannel campaign to promote its new Ask Deals service.

Ask Deals scours the Web for the deals available online, and presents them front and center on the results page. The service is designed to eliminate the need for consumers to search multiple coupon sites or search engines -- an increasingly popular pastime among cost-wary consumers.

The service was a no-brainer, given that searches for coupons on Ask have shot up nearly 50% this year, according to Scott Garell, president of Ask Networks.

Quite simply, "Ask Deals saves consumers time and money," said Garell. It's the answer our users are looking for."

The Omnicom agency chose to center the campaign around a "call and response" song in which an MC asks the audience: "Hey ladies/fellas, who wants a deal?" -- to which they reply, "I do! I do!" while dancing to music. The song carries on in perpetuity, with each chorus featuring a different person celebrating deals.

To support national TV spots, the campaign includes nine separate online video banners and ads directly on Ask.com, as well as a microsite featuring user-generated content and Facebook integration. TV will run across NBC in prime-time slots and on cable via Bravo, Oxygen, USA and SyFy, while the banners will run across various unspecified networks.

The microsite -- http://www.askdeals.com -- features an interactive version of the song that allows people to participate. Each user is prompted to enter an item they want a deal on, and to then use their webcam to make a recording of themselves dancing and singing along to the song.

To help generate viral traffic, the site requires participants to connect via Facebook. Each time a submission is created, a personalized link is posted to that user's news feed. The posts link friends back to the microsite so they can watch their friend's videos and create their own.

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