The Google Super Bowl Ad: Finding Love In Paris. And Untapped Opportunity.
Posted Feb. 12, 2010 by Casey Flanagan
Filed under: Advertising, Ideas, Marketing
My favorite ad from last week’s #BrandBowl came from Google. Yes, Google. Whose CEO reportedly described the Super Bowl as “the last bastion of unaccountable spending in corporate America.” Let’s set irony aside for a moment. (Especially because Google’s ultimate objectives for the spot are up for debate.) Instead, I think the most newsworthy piece of this story for marketers is the fact that the Google Super Bowl ad wasn’t even a Super Bowl ad. It was a YouTube video.
And that’s important. The days of a job simply being closed are coming to an end. Assets are rarely used once. In this new age of continuous engagement, content is king and opportunities are everywhere.
A good marketing eye can identify a new opportunity for existing assets. In the case of the Google Super Bowl ad, “Parisian Love” had been on YouTube for three months when they decided they “wanted to share it with a wider audience.” Mission accomplished. It’s been watched more than 2 million times – just on the official Google channel – since Monday morning. I’m among those who checked in and, while I was there, I watched the others. The video featuring The National was also stellar.
The ability to identify opportunities has always been valuable. But with opportunities growing exponentially, content readily available and accessible technology becoming the given, the ability to identify opportunities in real time (and then activate the ideas) is a more important skill set to have than ever before.
4 Responses to “The Google Super Bowl Ad: Finding Love In Paris. And Untapped Opportunity.”
Posted on Feb 15, 2010 by Jeffrey Schrab
re: “The days of a job simply being closed are coming to an end. Assets are rarely used once.”
Actually, I think this has been the case for quite sometime now. Be it photo libraries, last year’s promo-copy or mining the past for new “retro-style” ad, clients expect their agencies to have those materials at hand.
Digital Asset Management (DAM) should be a core part of any agency or design house’s workflow.
Posted on Feb 17, 2010 by cflanagan
Totally agree. But I believe – in a lot of ways – the practice may be leading the mindset. We’re proactively making assets safe + available. But, in general, marketers can be better about proactively finding / identifying / being aware of new opportunities for them.
Thanks for stopping by and posting.
Posted on Feb 22, 2010 by Karen
Hey Casey — did you find out who concepted and created the ad? I did a quick search (on Google of course) and couldn’t find it.
Posted on Feb 24, 2010 by cflanagan
Hey Karen. According to this article it was done in-house (at the Google Creative Labs). Though, interestingly, despite being “in-house,” the creator was a graduate of Brandcenter at VCU. Thanks for stopping by…