Everybody loves watching Google and her moves, with the curiosity of watching Magician Pasha with his hand in the top hat. Presto! and we have here today -- Google Chrome Full Page color ads in leading Indian Dailies...
Blogs, Tweet-o-sphere, and all modes of communication is abuzz with the question... What made Google, the largest medium by itself on the planet, resort to newspapers in India? and that to for promoting not its cash register - Adwords, not its milking cow - The Google search engine... But... its browser Google Chrome..
As the rhetoric exclamation of these questions spread like wildfire i am sure ol shrewd pals - Larry and Sergei are laughing all the way to the bank, since one half of the objective for the campaign was done successfully... Which was... the huge buzz factor.. News of the day across multiple media by just few ad inserts in a daily.
Now what could be the other half of the objective? Let me add my two cents to the buzz, and to the grins of Larry and Sergei.
1.First thing in the morning :
Why did Google choose English newspapers as a medium, that has almost the same reach as its search engine? The size of the ad, of course was for the reasons of getting impact and showing dominance. Dominance in the wake of newer versions of Internet Explorer, and rising popularity of Firefox and other browsers.
Size aside, the ad was not seen on television or on hoarding (may follow later). Newspaper was the unsuspecting first choice..
Pondering over the reason for this choice took me to a conversation i had with a former senior colleague of mine.. who told me about a pitch he did to a prestigious client for organizing a large corporate event. His competitor was the number one business TV channel known for doing custom events.
When his turn came, which was after the TV channel's, he was asked- " My dear Sir, you just now saw the largest business channel walk out of the room. What is it that you can give us that they can't?"
To which my friend replied -" We reach your audience, much before any other medium does in the morning..... Not everyone has a television in the Washroom.. and busy people usually read a newspaper in their most intimate morning moments :-)". ..... The pitch was won..
Bottom-line... Newspaper gets there First thing in the Morning.. however this may change for different audience.
2. Why Google Chrome? Why not other products?
Before Google, it was Yahoo and Rediff that did a multi-crore blitzkrieg to promote relaunch of the complete portal.. However, Google here chose to do it only for its browser, not for any of their other cash cow products.
There could be two reasons for this.
a. The browser, which began long back as a modest, good-to-have, add on tool to browse the Internet, is poised to become the most important and core application on your machine.
Cloud computing and Software as a Service, are becoming jargons of the day, which primarily use the browser at its core. Very soon, all the applications that you would ever need would run from a remote server, which can be accessed through..... the good old browser.
Hence to gain a good share of the browser user base is very important for any online brand, to gain a ready platform to offer overall computing service in the future. It is not a matter of surprise, that the Google Chrome Desktop operating system is touted to run on online application.
Having said this, for India, we are still away from the day when we can have reliable connectivity. However, the day is getting closer.
3. Dominance during a competition launch - "Who is the boss?":
With over 2 million downloads reported for Microsoft's Internet Explorer ver.9, six days ago, the battle lines had to be drawn between the Redmond Giant and Mountain View Monarch.
The stakes are too high for this one, and hence Google Chrome perhaps wanted to show its dominance - First Thing in the Morning.
Newspaper was its best bet..
PS: Imagine the sight of Google Chrome and MS IE bidding on each others keyword on Adwords as well as bing!! Keep watching!
