Ridhaa came for a chat about marketing this week. I relish these kinds of conversations with under graduate management students, it is one of the reasons why I love my job at Royal Holloway so much.
We got talking about the Google stories advertising campaign. Ridhaa had seen this execution (below) via a viral, or word of mouth, peer referral. You do not need to understand the dialogue, although it does carry English subtitles.
The equivalent UK version of this campaign features the story of a social entrepreneur who wins a contract to build a temporary skate park on a piece of urban derelict land near the Olympic park in east London, In thinking about this I've noticed a number of Google "Stories" executions and I think eventually I answered my own question "Why would a non-paid at point of consumption premium search engine service provider want to build its brand though emotional engagement ?". Microsoft have done it too.
The nub of a response might come from technology convergence; look at how Apple, Microsoft and Google are the leading triad building powerhouse portfolios of software and hardware applications and brands. Umbrella logins offer consumers a convenient reason to stay in-house and I think we'll see bundles of brands looking to attract and keep users and paying customers. Example: Google's brand extension into technology hardware (physical product, no longer just a software service provider...) and the newish £229 Chromebook web surfing device. With a plethora of competition in the thin client tablet marketplace Apple knows well that creating positive emotional bonds with consumers is an effective way to leverage (my chum Andrew who works in low cost airlines uses the more provocative 'gouge' term here...) chunky price premiums.
Why not join the Apple world ? Everything is beautifully designed, simple to use, reliable and desirably expensive.
