Showcasing the company's core product, the search engine

Feb 8, 2010 08:53 GMT  ·  By
Google chooses the Super Bowl to showcase the company's core product, the search engine
   Google chooses the Super Bowl to showcase the company's core product, the search engine

As all US folks, and inadvertently the whole world, know, Sunday night was the Super Bowl and, while it's still a sporting event a heart, much of the action happens outside the field as brands and advertisers battle it out in front of an estimated audience of 100 million people. It's a great chance for the biggest brands, which traditionally have a sizeable advertising budget, to show they can spend huge amounts of money for a 30 second clip. Which is why Google's involvement was a big surprise for most people, even after a tweet from CEO Eric Schmidt hinted that Google would do a spot during the Super Bowl.

Google doesn't do much advertising. Well, it does a ton of advertising for others but hasn't really put too much effort in advertising its own products, certainly not in traditional outlets like newspapers or TV. And when it does, it brings its own approach to it. Google aired a 30-second spot called "Parisian Love" during the Super Bowl which tells the story of a man, or is it a woman, finding true love in Paris, where else. Heartwarming stuff really and with Valentine's Day just around the corner, Google couldn't have picked a better subject. It's the first Super Bowl ad for Google and one of the few TV ads the company has aired. And if you think it looks familiar, that's because it is.

"If you watched the Super Bowl this evening you'll have seen a video from Google called "Parisian Love". In fact you might have watched it before, because it's been on YouTube for over three months. We didn't set out to do a Super Bowl ad, or even a TV ad for search. Our goal was simply to create a series of short online videos about our products and our users, and how they interact. But we liked this video so much, and it's had such a positive reaction on YouTube, that we decided to share it with a wider audience," Google's top dog, Eric Schmidt, wrote himself on the Official Google Blog.

While most companies would hire the best ad agency and spend millions of dollars on a Super Bowl spot which would air once or twice before finding its rightful resting place on YouTube, Google took the exact opposite approach. It took an existing ad, one that was already up on YouTube and which doesn't exactly scream high budget, and just ran it. Of course, this wasn't Google being a cheapskate, airing a clip which is already online, on YouTube no less, sends as much of a message as the clip itself. The clip is embedded below and you can check out the other ads in the series on the dedicated YouTube channel.