Google and Bing are making a splash offline with their traditional television advertising spots; Bing with a series of holiday-themed animated shorts featuring popular cartoon characters, and Google with longer, story-telling spots.
Google and Bing both seem poised to continue their foray into television advertising, given the success of recent campaigns and news of upcoming spots.
Google aired a 90-second Google+ commercial during the Green Bay Packers vs. Detroit Lions football game on Thanksgiving, promoting the Circles and Hangouts features of their social network. Bing, meanwhile, has announced a series of stop-motion animated shorts to air this holiday season during classics like “Frosty the Snowman” and in movie trailers.
Both companies recently received accolades for their 2011 Web TV commercials, taking eight of the top 10 “most effective” spots, as judged by television advertising authority AceMetrix.
You might remember Google’s first real crack at TV advertising, during the 2010 Super Bowl, with their “Parisian Love” search commercial. Posted on YouTube under the SearchStories channel, the 52-second clip has had over 6.2 million views.
As Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in a blog post at the time, “We didn’t set out to do a Super Bowl ad, or even a TV ad for search. Our goal was simply to create a series of short online videos about our products and our users, and how they interact. But we liked this video so much, and it’s had such a positive reaction on YouTube, that we decided to share it with a wider audience.”
This most recent commercial, Google+: Sharing but like real life, attempts to draw a wider audience to their social network by emphasizing the ability to share different types of content with friends and acquaintances, depending on their relationship.
Bing’s animated shorts were produced by Bent Image Labs and will appear during “South Park Christmas,” “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” and other holiday specials this season.
Where Google more typically aims to tell a story through longer commercials, often over a minute in length, Bing opted to keep theirs under 30 seconds and play on the popularity of well-known Christmas characters like Santa and Mrs. Claus.
In this series, animated characters use Bing features such as Travel or Local to find ways to solve their often comical problems – take Yukon Cornelius and his sudden need for Hot Yoga or the Abominable Snowman searching for tips on how to become a scary monster:
What do you think of Google and Bing embracing traditional television advertising? Are their videos effective? Let us know in the comments!