“What would a TV commercial from 40 years ago be, when it’s being re-interpreted through modern technology and the internet?” Are you curious about the answer? Let Google answer it.
Google carried out a project, Google Project Re:Brief where it selected classic American commercials from the 60s and 70s, including Coca Cola, Volvo, Avis Car Rental and Alka-Seltzer, and destructured these commercials.
Concept-wise, Google wants these classics to transcend beyond the one way communication as mere TV commercials or 2-dimensional advertisements but to add the interactive feature of modern technology, such as social media, mobile phones, internet, and reinterpret and re-represent these classics based on their original commercial demand. This is what we called, a Brief.
Coca Cola-Hilltop
“Hilltop” was a Coca Cola commercial filmed in 1971. Originally Coca cola wanted to convey the message that Coca Cola was not only popular worldwide but it pulls you and me closer than ever. Under this brief, the creative director then, Bill Backer wrote a classic slogan “I’d Like To Buy The World A Coke”on the napkin when he was waiting at a restaurant for plane transfer. Coca Cola commercial jingle was thus developed based on this sentence.
In the commercial, they found people of different ethnic background holding Coca Cola bottle wrapped in different language cover, gathering on the hilltop of a mountain in Italy, and singing, “I’d like to buy the world a coke”.
Due to technology limitation back then, the “I’d like to buy the world a coke” concept was merely a slogan. Now in the 21st century, Google collaborated with the creative director then, Harvey Gabor and sought to put “I’d like to buy the world a coke” into reality.
This reinterpreted campaign allows consumers to literally ‘buy the world a coke’ through Google ad technology and renovated automatic vending machine. This is how it works :
You could go through Google ad page or iPhone iAD to send a free coke to any stranger in any corner of the world. Choose a renovated vending machine at the location you wish to send the coke to on the interactive ad, fill out the message you wish to send or record a video, Google will even auto-translate for you so you don’t have to worry about language barrier. Once you click on send, Coca Cola will send your message to the designated vending machine. When a random person passes by, sees the message in the vending machine and click on it, he/she can get a free coke and can return a ‘thank you’ message through vending machine.
Volvo- Drive It Like You Hate It
When Volvo tried to enter American market in 1960s, they wanted to let the Americans know that Volvo is ‘reliable and durable’. The then art director, Amil Gargano gathered a fact that “Volvo’s average tenure of use is twice of that of American’s, at 11 years.” Hence, Volvo developed the concept of “Drive it like you hate it” to showcase its durability.
In the film, the driver, Rally drives the car in a near-violent manner: an abrupt stop, then racing it in full speed, an over-arching turn then flying over a sand dune. The driver does what he can to manually ‘labor’ the car.
50 years have gone by, in the internet age, Google adopted another form of presenting ‘durability’.
They found a Volvo car (P1800s, in 1966) that has most mileage, over 2.9 million miles (roughly 4.9 million kms) the in the history. Google set up a website for the car and invited everyone to witness its history and to celebrate the day it makes it to 3 million miles.
In addition, Google also invited the owner of the car, Irv Gordon to document every journey he had with the car and marked it on Google Map accordingly. In the meantime, you could start your own story with your beloved car.
Google Project Re: Brief
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About Author
Mika, Internet Marketing Observer
Born in the 60s, Mika has worked in the field of consumption marketing for decades. He experienced brand strategy, product concept all the way to official launch. He cares about traditional marketing model as well as the changes arise from Web2.0 and social media.
blog :jabamay.blogspot.com
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