during my run today, i was listening to sports radio (as i usually do), and there was a spot for pontiac that came on. as with most car commercials, it was quickly forgettable, just white noise, until the very end where, instead of saying "go to pontiac.com", the voiceover said "google pontiac for more information".
google pontiac.
and i thought, how cool is that? what a cool way to advertise yourself. google's damn smart. they have no advertising on their site, and their own advertising is purely done in the context it's used. google pontiac. brilliant brilliant stuff.
i felt great about a company i already feel great about.
a pontiac commercial came on while i was watching college hoops today. again, it's the usual car crap that does little to differentiate one brand from the other. at the end they did the same thing- "google pontiac for more information" but on the screen, there was the google page with the word "pontiac" in the search bar.
and i thought, wow, they screwed the pooch with that.
if they didn't put the google page in there, it would have been great. it would have been so true to google as a brand - unassuming, conversational, anti-advertising. but they didn't, and that google page reminded people that they paid to have a corporate tie-in with pontiac. it's a small thing, but it's a big thing. that page makes google seem like an entity. without it, and they're that cool search engine that even pontiac uses.
'tis a shame. they weren't true to themselves..
come to think of is, they've been making a habit of not being true to themselves.
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