To promote its latest break-through search innovation, Google launches their first-ever offline advertising campaign to promote its new music product, by choosing radio to communicate the message. To handle the high-profile, multi-spot assignment, Google sought-out bicoastal creative shop Oink Ink Radio to create 20 original spots for the sizable advertising effort (www.oinkradio.com).
Google receives millions of music search queries every day and, to help streamline searches, queries and massive catalogs, they’re rolling out a state-of-the-art feature that enables one to search and more easily discover millions of songs, all via Google’s trademark web search capabilities. Google’s new music search product is a collaborative effort between their own technology, and music hub Lala and band-centric MySpace, allowing consumers to search for music by artist, song or even just partial lyrics.
Once an inquiry is input, Google provides the search results while MySpace and Lala also provide links to purchase the full song (www.lala.com; www.myspace.com). “When Google first contacted us, they explained that this was enormously important to them” says Oink Ink President, Dan Price. “They had never advertised before and needed the work to be cutting-edge, unique, clever, perfect. What I’d call ‘Google-worthy'” he adds. Given the creative platform of radio and music, combined with its affordability, the radio-only strategy was deemed the ideal solution.
Seventeen of Oink Ink’s radio writers created scores of scripts over a three-week period, a dozen of which were ultimately presented to Google. The winning idea, chosen by the Google creative team led by Product Marketing Manager Matt Ghering and Director of Consumer Marketing Bernardo Hernandez, featured a unique concept: “The idea was to marry the music with the computer, or rather your computer keyboard,” said Oink Ink Creative Director Jim Price. “How do you use Google? You navigate with your mouse, type with your keypad. That won’t change, what is changing is the results…now the results are music. With the same effort users expended previously to, for example, find their favorite band’s website, now they can use to find every song ever recorded by the band, song samples within the search results, everything” he explains.
According to Jim Price, “The assignment was significant. Google initially wanted 20 original spots. And each had to be adaptable to work across all station formats while communicating the new feature, of course, but Google also had a desire to utilize the artists’ work in some capacity. After all that was our assignment, to get listeners to ‘connect’ to the music, as they would during their Google experience.”
The campaign, entitled “Keyboard,” broadly and simply demonstrates how easy searching for music can be with Google. Just as easy, in fact, as traditional Google searching. The spots feature seemingly random computer keyboard typing, each evolving into the melody of a popular song. Los Angeles-based actor Mick Wingert delivers the message, “Google has always shown your favorite music results. Now you can hear them, too…with just a few keystrokes.”
“Historically, ad agencies had made-up our primary client base. Now more than half the work we do is for clients directly,” says Dan Price. “We’re uniquely structured to provide that direct service. We aggressively seek-out the very best radio writers in the industry, retaining them on an exclusive freelance basis, and our bi-coastal presence provides another degree of resourcefulness. I just think the industry is evolving and becoming more streamlined over the past few years and we’ve positioned ourselves to take advantage of that,” he adds.
To hear a sample of the “Keyboard” campaign, please visit http://www.38greene.com and click on the "Client Log-In.” Enter Job ID: Keyboard; Password: Google.
ABOUT OINK INK
Oink Ink is an award-winning, bicoastal creative agency founded by veteran managing director and president Dan Price and his brother, executive creative director Jim Price. Oink Ink writes, produces, directs and manages radio advertising for ad agencies, client-direct accounts, cable network promos and special projects. Headquartered in New York, and with offices in Los Angeles, Oink Ink has been providing high-end radio work for 18 years, for such notable clients as AT&T, CBS Television, Coors Light, Ford Motor Company, Southwest Airlines and Staples, to name a few. Oink Ink is a sister company of 38 Greene Studios in New York, which produces sound design, radio, web advertising and original music work for such ad agency leaders BBDO, McCann-Erickson, Ogilvy, Publicis and Saatchi & Saatchi.
