There are few things more terrifying to me than the idea of going anywhere near a shopping establishment on Black Friday. But if I lived in New York City, I think I would this year because Google, Verizon, Reuters, and R/GA are teaming up to take over the largest displays on Times Square to allow for a giant Google Search by voice experiment/Droid advertisement.
What does this mean? On Black Friday, anyone who calls 888-376-4336 and does a Google Search by voice, will see their results displayed on either the Reuters sign or the NASDAQ sign in Times Square. So, if you say something like “new Jonas Brothers CD,” the display will come up with a giant Google Map complete with signs showing you where you can find that. Also included is the embarrassment that everyone in Times Square has just seen what ridiculous thing you are searching for.
This is all a big promotion for Droid, the new Android phone built by Verizon and being heavily pushed by Google. And the promotion has actually been going on for the past couple of weeks in New York, but it previously has only run during 90 minutes timeslots in the afternoon or night. On Black Friday, it will be running for 20 hours straight. I would love to know how much that advertisement cost.
Here’s a site with the countdown to the event complete with the message: “Droid will do Times Square for 20 hours…” Minds out of the gutter, folks.
Talk about big promoting.
The craziest promotional style BIG G has ever made. You couldn’t have picked any better day than Black Friday to set this Droid Invasion.
Coolest, Hoperfully GOogle will not censor those searches related to XXX stuffs.. sample will be “5 hawaaian colored briefs with LED”
More of the juicy stuff: http://bit.ly/droid-invasion-on-black-friday-insane
This will be something to follow on black friday. Google is doing a lot of “big” things. Can’t wait for my next flight to get free wifi at the airport.
Dang this is the coolest! “So if you search BIG FAT DILDO” –> guess what guys?
Hell yeah magnum…. just Hell yeah!
search “Google sucks”
Oh man….It would be hilarious to have a small bank of robodialers to search for all manner of ridiculous things. I can see people of various factions injecting things into this to shift the apparent zeitgeist to their cause. Let’s see: ‘Obama socialism’, ‘Glenn Beck is a Nazi’, ‘Jesus is here’, ‘The aliens have landed’ …
If only they display Google Intellisense results, that would be funny.
Yeah. Please publish the cost of this ad. I would like to know, if you ever find out.
“Also included is the embarrassment that everyone in Times Square has just seen what ridiculous thing you are searching for.”
And THIS is why I won’t be doing it! Unfortunately, my errands for the next few days seem to be conspiring to require me to be in Times Square around 6PM on Black Friday, and believe me, I’ve tried to come up with a way to avoid that!
This is by far the most amazing advertising campaign ever!
stupid, ill be spamming their system. noone else will give a shit about their signs
will safe search be active on this one or will be another #skittles twitter failure?
i can guess some very interesting search terms will be featured, hey its your 5 mins of fame…
Hasn’t this been going on for a while? I guess the difference now is that they’re going for 20 hrs instead of the 100min blocks they’ve been having
How did you get the the 20 hrs and not the part about how it has, in fact been going on for a while… in 90 min. runs. Jus’ sayin’…
I’m a selective reader. Also i believe that articles modify themselves. Magically.
This seems pretty cool. Wish I could see it in action.
Are store owners using this to get close to free publicity on a huge Time Square screen?
I can just see Apple having people search for “why Iphone is better than Droid”
calm down people. there will be so many hits done that I am pretty sure someone will monitor and block all nasty content allowing only legitimate nice phrazes go through.
I will be searching repeatedly for “Techcrunch Banana Hammock”!
super ad campaign, admirable
this looks fun XD
hell yeah!!!
Google is seriously taking over the world.
Google continues to amaze me as to how creative they are. Voice search, video search, text search. They have it all!
Now we just need to figure out how to use it and take advantage of it! That is a project in itself.
admin
http://invetrics.com
Hope somebody doesn’t image search the First Lady.
I was thinking that, Google would have an even bigger apology to make if that one slipped through
They’ve been doing that exact promotion during busy hours (I think noon to two and six to eight) for the last few weeks. There’s usually a slight wait to get your turn for your search to control the screen.
talk bout googling!…this is going to be fun!
Sarah
http://www.isopurewater.com/
This is a great idea, but the required potential i didn’t see.
Hey Sarah, I’ve noticed you comment in many posts and your comments rarely (if ever) add anything to the conversation. They actually seem quite bot-like and seem to be nothing more than a thinly-veiled excuse to post your website link and game search engines. Just thought I’d mention that.
Times Square experiment is certainly a great idea. However the site and the video ads look really disappointing, you think they advertise a new shoot ‘em up video game or something. They seem to target (male) teenagers while they could present all the great features this phone has to offer in a more efficient way.
i love android phones. try google android os and you will also love them.
http://www.zjtechlive.com/try-google-android-os-1-5-on-windows/
http://www.zjtechlive.com/try-android-2-0-on-your-windows/
Interesting move from google but is this any good?
It seems flawed: if you don’t know that droid is a mobile device (presumably some people don’t) then the search results will just look like they could come from a web search, which undermines the campaign’s purpose.
Plus it just doesn’t seem very Google. Google’s marketing always seems to be about doing something smart, not just spending big…
What is Black Friday and how can I make money out of it?
This is cool. We’ve just launched a new website in Dublin, Ireland called Zozzy TV which lets users upload their own videos to be broadcasted on huge screens across the Irish Capital.
So where ever you are in the world you can be on the streets of Dublin in minutes with Zozzy TV! We’re launching webcams next week so you can see the audience live as your video plays.
We hope to have a times square screen very soon..
The website is http://www.zozzytv.com if anyone wants to check it out!
MG Siegler wrote: “I would love to know how much that advertisement cost.”
I would know what people will search for. I hope for one or the other laugh , like iPhone, Bing, ‘toys’, …
I must have been sleeping… since when did Verizon start to _build_ phones?
This is a big chance for everyone to promote business. All Spammers, please, do not vitiate this gala day. I am going to search for terms like “webxiom.com” “webface.com” “twitter webxiom” “iwhoozy.com” You get better return by promoting business. Lets celebrate the day !!!
Unless people do what they did on that Microsoft display in the Macy’s store, people start searching for something that defeats their marketing campaign such as searching for iPhones instead of Droids.