Nobody Recognizes The Chrome Icon, So Google Wants You To Make A Video About It

Erick Schonfeld

Erick Schonfeld is a technology journalist and the executive producer of DEMO. He is also a partner at bMuse, a product incubator in New York City. Schonfeld is the former Editor in Chief of TechCrunch. At TechCrunch, he oversaw the editorial content of the site, helped to program the Disrupt conferences and CrunchUps, produced TCTV shows, and wrote daily... → Learn More

Thursday, June 11th, 2009

Quick, draw the icon for Google’s Chrome browser. It’s got a bunch of primary colors, but that’s all I can remember about it without looking at it. Most people have never seen it, or even know what Chrome is. (It is Google’s browser). Google wants to change all that with a viral marketing campaign.

It is asking people to submit videos showing creative ways to build the Chrome icon. It will pull the best one together into a final reel presumably. Here is where you can submit your videos until July 22 and see what else has been submitted.

But just getting the early Chrome to lend a hand with marketing by spreading videos around the Web is indicative of Google’s marketing philosophy overall. This is not a Bing-style marketing blitz on TV and everywhere else. Although, Google is not above running ads on TV anymore. Browsers are a new market for Google where it still has practically zero mindshare. And it will try to get that mindshare any way it can, both on TV and on the Web.

I wonder which set of ads will be more effective.

blog comments powered by Disqus