Joey Tung's Blog

This blog post is a response to Kristine’s “New Google Ad will make you cry, without understanding a word that is said“:

It seems like nowadays, many advertisements are focused on playing with the viewer’s heartstrings. Recently, I viewed one of Skype’s addition to their “reunion” themed advertisements about two girls named Sarah and Paige who both are born with only one arm. Needless to say, it was hard to get through this video without feeling a tug of emotion and a tear or two.

After watching the Google ad that Kristine posted about, the same tugging feeling happened again. Kristine’s post highlights the fact that Google is constantly reminding us of how often we use their services and how much we rely on them to tell us things like what the weather is, what flights are happening between which countries, and even help reconnect two long-lost childhood friends. She also mentions how Google was able to show their brand without overtly showcasing their brand.

However, what I took away from watching the video is how that by targeting our emotions, the advertisement has made itself memorable, worthwhile, and, most importantly, note-worthy. By note-worthy, I mean that it’s now worthy of being passed around social media. It’s now become interesting to watch. Rather than being one of those ads that appear before a Youtube video that you want to watch, it’s now the video you want to watch. You don’t want to click away from this advertisement–you’re clicking to watch it. And that is the biggest feat of all in terms of advertisements. How many advertisements get overlooked and skipped? Too many too count.

What Google has done with this touching video is a sign of brilliant marketing.