Companies and brands spend millions on creativity and airtime to secure the audience and all round PR value of a TV advertising spot during the Super Bowl. In fact it was a tech company that created the craze for high concept ads in the breaks during transmission. In 1984 Apple introduced the Macintosh to the world during the Super Bowl with an ad directed by Ridley Scott.
No surprise then that Google chose this sporting event to launch its first ever TV ad, called Parisian Love. Well, sort of. In fact Google first launched the TV ad on YouTube, a service which it incidentally owns.
A greater example of the blurring of boundaries between conventional and digital channels it would be hard to find. This was one of a series of short videos that Google launched on YouTube a few months ago. It was the positive reaction in that channel that prompted Google chiefs to air at during the big game. “It’s had such a positive reaction on YouTube, that we decided to share it with a wider audience” blogged Google CEO Eric Schmidt. So in effect the decision to air this ad was at least in part, crowd sourced.
Whilst the concept is imaginative, a love story told with search terms, the execution is far from big budget, in fact it is a series of screen shots from the world’s favourite search engine.
Moreover this is a text book example of how offline media fuels online. Take a look at the YouTube stats. (to see the latest click here and then on the video page click on the Statistics & Data drop down menu below the clip.) The video took three months to gain a million views and then added another half a million overnight when the ad aired.
Not many compared with the 100 million that view the Super Bowl on TV, but it is still early days for social media.
PR and the Social Web 