Friday, February 16, 2007

Google Presents: It's Own Advertising Campaign?

What I love about Google is there unabashed willingness to experiment, explore, and create. Sure, they have a lot of money to play with, but without trying new things, innovation cannot be realized. So, with the acquisition of Youtube, Google thought they ought to try filming their own licensed videos. The result was the creation of Gmail Theatre, a four-minute Youtube series, broken up into four one-minute commercials.

Released just a few days ago, the series is part of an effort to promote Google's ever-so-sleek e-mail service, Gmail. According to Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics, the estimated cost for these low-tech commercials amounted to a few thousand dollars, practically penny change. And if the response rates to Google's commercials reach levels comparable other popular Youtube videos (approx. 250,000 hits), the ROI potential looks quite promising. Pretty entertaining stuff, simple while carrying a lucid message. Hopefully, this is just the beginning.
-AK

1 comment:

Craphammer said...

Interesting...

I'm very curious to see how these work as a vehicle... when the costs are so low it's hard to raise an argument against them. ie: I wouldn't consider them damaging, so worse case is they just fade away.

In watching it I contemplated drinking a glass of antifreeze to stop the pain, but then realized I could just hit stop. And I'm definitely not the target audience. ;)