Google Pulls Super Bowl End-Around with Recycled YouTube Ad
Submitted by Stash Luczkiw on February 8, 2010 – 4:21 pmNo Comment
The estimated 100 million people who tuned into last night’s Super Bowl glimpsed history, Google’s first foray into mainstream TV advertising. What timing for its “Parisian Love” spot. This was not just the main stream of main stream audiences; it was the most sought-after and expensive stretch of American TV real estate, all to remind the public that Google can help you find just about anything, even trans-Atlantic love. To hear Google CEO Eric Schmidt tell it, the search behemoth “didn’t set out to do a Super Bowl ad.” He continues: “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.”
So Google shelled out nearly $5 million, The Guardian figures, (no doubt doing the back-of-the-envelope calculation as a 30-second spot this year cost roughly $2.8 million and the spot ran 53 seconds) for an advert that nearly 2 million viewers had already seen on its YouTube channel.
What gives?
Google had a viral hit on its hands, certified by the Geeks and the YouTube community. Why not run it during the Super Bowl then? Let the mainstream in on a conversation that’s been building for the past three months online, the thinking goes. With “Parisian Love,” Google pulls off a little reverse-engineering of a now familiar formula. Advertisers routinely put their highest profile ads on YouTube (or fans do it for them) to keep the conversation going well after the spot airs.
The strategy seemed to work just fine. “Parisian Love” was a trending Twitter topic (though briefly) after airing, and will no doubt gain a second third life on YouTube.
A generation ago, Apple stirred the masses with its iconoclastic “1984″ Super Bowl spot, a spot we still talk about today even though it only ran once on TV. That ad has a huge following still on YouTube. But why not a spot born on YouTube, anointed by YouTubers as cool — cool enough even for a Super Bowl audience?
A quarter-century ago, Apple and its ad agency Chiat/Day, gave us a lesson in cool. Today, it is the public that tells us what’s cool enough to run during the Super Bowl.
Additional comments powered by BackType