John Handelaar said at May 24th, 2009 at 7:34pm

Of your three failure points, I feel compelled to mention that two are shared by every iPod ad ever.

Andy Buckingham said at May 24th, 2009 at 8:30pm

This is actually one of a series of “ads” that was produced by several design agencies, all the with the goal of making a short video piece in celebration of the browser rather than to specifically advertise it.

My understanding is that only later have quotes appeared from Google suggesting they may run as TV spots. I’m guessing this has probably stemmed from Google requiring an easy way to explain the short video pieces to the press?

That aside, I agree that these are pretty useless as stand alone ads. More to the point, surely they need a sub heading: “Only available on Windows. Err, yeah, sorry.”

Alex Lee said at May 24th, 2009 at 9:39pm

I believe this is just a branding/awareness campaign and the ability to measure the effectiveness of these is always hard. As it’s on TV, the ad will expose the brand to people who may not have heard of it and will remind people who already know Chrome that it’s a) still around and b) Google are actively investing in it’s promotion (and hopefully development). This is done without a hard sell.

That aside, the double standards in how creativity (read, un-measurable fun stuff) is allowed on the TV ads but not allowed in product development seems a little short-sighted.

Paul said at May 24th, 2009 at 10:23pm

I agree James, if I saw this ad without having heard of Chrome I’d assume it was some kind of game. As for the ‘clutter’ angle, I don’t really think your average Joe is concerned with clutter in IE or Firefox. Speed, probably, security possibly, compatibility certainly. Clutter, no.

I suppose it might work as part of a larger campaign, but I’d say that marketing web browsers via traditional media is akin to throwing large wadges of cash into a bottomless pit; still, they probably have the cash to throw.

Fergus Pitt said at May 24th, 2009 at 11:53pm

The last frame of the advert gives the indication of what angle Google are taking and for what it’s worth, I think it’s quite good.

Picking up what Alex says, this looks like an awareness campaign designed to introduce a new (for most people) sub-brand; Chrome tied to their main brand; Google.

The music and animation both leverage the known attractive attributes of Google; friendly, easy, simple, light, quick (cue argument about whether these are deserved), and invest the new brand Chrome with those feelings.

If the viewer happens to be paying attention (more likely on the ‘net than on broadcast TV), they might recognise the browser elements, and if they are really motivated they might pick up the de-clutter and speed elements, but the lizard-brain stuff is the music, the colours and the known brand.

Of course because Google is an incredibly open, transparent, friendly company they’ll doubtless release their research informing this campaign, and any research on the effectiveness. Let’s all hold our breath shall we?

Robert Stevens said at May 25th, 2009 at 12:32pm

Hi James,
We tested the Google Chrome ad using eye tracking on 30 people and it performs extremely well for three key measures engagement, message delivery and elicitation of desired behaviour: http://thinkeyetracking.com/Blog/?p=158

James Cridland said at May 25th, 2009 at 2:43pm

Robert, that’s really interesting research.

“The Google Chrome Japan ad is the best we have ever tested”, you say, basing this fact on the engagement with the logo. I don’t deny that the logo is the centre of attention for thirty seconds.

“Think Eyetracking tested 30 internet users in one day and of the 30, 22 said they would consider downloading it. Of the eight respondents who said they would not consider downloading the main reason stated was that they did not know what Google Chrome was.”

That’s more interesting. Because the ad never says what the product is, either you’re saying that 22 people had heard of the product and that this ad was the tipping point to get them to download it, or you’re saying that 22 people were quite happy to download something they’d never heard of. As a control, did you ask these internet users whether they were aware of what Google Chrome was before they saw the ad?

And did “the story” which people were apparently so engaged in manage to communicate the consumer benefit of Google Chrome? i.e. did people say why they’d download it?

If the point of the ad is to get people comfortable with the Google Chrome logo – a logo almost unused in the product itself – then I’m not surprised it’s done so well in your research.