Dear Google,
I’ve been an admirer for a long time. A person has to try very hard to not know who you are. You’re popular, and you stand out with your own style and your affinity for the primary colors—red, blue, and yellow. Moreover, you know how to dress up and change yourself for the calendar occasion. I know when I’m seeing something a little different in your logo that the day has a little bit of extra meaning to it. And, in case you think I didn’t notice that you snuck in a non-primary color in your logo—the green was not lost on me. You’re a bit of a rebel, and you don’t always see it as prudent to follow the rules, and it’s clearly allowed you to carry yourself well.
Google's authenticity sets it apart from the rest.
Let’s talk about substance over style. To me, as a brand you have a strong direction and values. You understand that one way to be a great brand is to focus on your users and, like a chain of precisely placed dominos, all else will fall into place. If I’m not mistaken—and I am not based on a quick use of your search engine—this focus on the user experience helps to define you as a brand. It’s a central tenet of great brand building—start with a great product that fulfills a human need. For me, if I may be so bold, what I really admire is how you have managed to show more than the functional service that defined you; you’ve imbued the brand with emotion and the human element. As a connoisseur of advertising, I still remember seeing your Super Bowl ad “Parisian Love”. I was in a room watching advertising with my MBAs students — it’s just what this advertising professor does on his Super Bowl Sunday. The ad was a surprise to many of us when it first appeared, but it showed everyone in school that you are more than an adroit and good-looking search engine; you’re an integral part of the everyday life of so many people.
As good as Parisian Love was, you didn’t stop there. One of the principles of strong brand building is repetition with variation. In common parlance, strong brands know how to convey a consistent message but keep their look and style fresh. You’ve done this time and time again. “Dear Sophie” told us about Google Chrome, but it did more than this, it told us the story of how the brand offers products that serve us to make our lives better and, in terms of the execution, I definitely had something stuck in my eye by the end of it. At least I learned my lesson when you made another appearance on the Super Bowl with “Loretta”— I was ready with a box of tissues in hand for that one! Put simply, you know who you are and that makes all the great work you do have the countenance of effortlessness. As someone with a near lifelong passion for advertising, you add a lot of fuel to that passion.
Let me share one more thing I love about your brand. I admire your authenticity. Brands, much like many of us in high school, often struggle to figure out who they are. Trust me, I know, I’ve spent countless hours helping brands understand what they represent. Yet, you carry yourself in a manner that conveys you understand that brands have a purpose beyond the bottom dollar. Although you’re a business, you look for synergies that make advertising beneficial to both marketers and consumers—that’s arguably the holy grail of great advertising. Moreover, part of the reason you are so popular, is that part of your being is that you care about the consumer. In your “Get Back to What You Love” advertisement, you reminded us that, while Covid-19 reshaped the way the world operates, it didn’t change the brand’s own identity. You reminded us that you were there for us at all stages of the pandemic.
Look, I am not the popular kid myself, but I still think we’d be a great match. First, while green isn’t my favorite color, I’ve definitely got a bit of a rebel in me. Second, you are grounded in knowledge—you offer people more knowledge at their fingertips than they will ever be able to digest or comprehend. As an educator, my currency is knowledge as well; I sift through and collate knowledge to disseminate it in a way that substantively improves how people think. So, while we might operate a little differently, at the core I think we have the same passion for knowledge.
I’d love to meet and grab a coffee sometime. If you are interested, well, all you need to do is search for me online—I’m confident that you, more than anyone, know how to do this!
With admiration,
Derek
