You may recall Google’s television commercial that played during the Super Bowl – "Parisian Love". This was Google’s first television advertisement, and YouTube says it led to over 150,000 users creating their own versions of it, as part of Google’s "Search Stories" campaign.
"It’s become a great example of how a brand can involve its audience in an ad campaign," YouTube says on its Biz Blog. "The effort continues to evolve with the first co-branded Search Story spot, released last week to coincide with this week’s opening of Toy Story 3. The video features a few characters you may well know and love (Buzz, Woody and the gang) sharing their own search story."
Google’s Robert Wong, Creative Director of Search Stories talks more about the campaign in that blog post. "Search has become so commonplace in our lives and when you take a step back you can see that your searches are actually marking time," says Wong. "In kind of the same way that pictures or songs might, they tell the story of your life. We thought this was a pretty cool notion. Then, from there, it was a natural evolution to stringing some searches together to make a story. Because at the end of the day, the best search results don’t just show up on a web page, they show up in someone’s life."
Google’s Search Stories have proven to be valuable, not just for those behind the videos, but for others that simply appear in the video. Back in February, after the Super Bowl, WebProNews talked to CEA, the first company featured in Google’s commercial who actually saw a big increase in traffic. Unfortunately, not everybody has the Super Bowl to promote their videos.