Google killing its competition in new media marketing
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Google has made some very good moves when it comes to tapping into edge-centric, “new media” communities to enhance its brand value.
First, came the Gmail-”M”-Video — The Gmail team asked everyone around the world to help them complete a video by submitting 5-second creative videos, which were put together in the final version.
It is a great example of a collaborative project that thousands of Google customers around the world participated in alongside Google itself — new media participation at its prime.
Benefit to Google — great publicity and buzz among everyone who thought about and worked on the video; the Gmail logo travels across the world (free branding).
Benefit to participants — 5 seconds of fame; The warm feeling of being a part of something bigger than ourselves. Everyone wins!
Check out the video below.
Now, Google’s been quick to tap into another rising internet trend — the ” _____ for laymen” videos created by Common Craft.
It seems like they were tapped to create a Google Docs introductory video. It is perfect for their target demographic, and just sends out very positive feelings regardings the company’s affiliation with its customers (Read: increases Google’s brand equity).
Check out the video below.
What’s the lesson here (Startups, listen up!)
This is for pre-launch startups that are talking to people like they’ve already had an IPO with a $40B market-cap. (and I meet a number of them).
If you DO have a $40B market cap, and wanted your lips to be tightly sealed and wanted to fully control how you are communicating with the outside world through tightly scripted Press Releases, I might understand — one wrong word and your market-cap could lose a lot.
But you’re not — you’re a pre-launch startup with the opportunity of meeting and making a lot of friends among your customers — among the people who would, in turn, regard you and your products with good warm feelings.
Even if you do no planning or strategy, just go out and be a good person, help people online. It’ll do you a lot of good.
3:52 am
Kill Google! — this is not me sayin’ it, but I predict some people (esp. those startups that lost out to Google) will eventually start hating it as much as they hate MS. There are quite a few people who are willing to pay a tad bit more at mom ‘n pop shops as opposed to Walmart etc.
11:41 pm
the second video is not loading? its giving me the message “this video is no longer available”?
11:41 pm
opppsss! just saw this post was from last year… sorry