Brand: google

Google, in honor of its 10-year anniversary, pulled out Google 2001. They're the oldest search results still available. In the passing years the logo has changed, but searching still happens in exactly the same way. Most of the sites found no longer exist.

Traditional brand thinking is based on building a consistent image. When the strategy changes, all the brand’s expressions have to chance. It was absolutely necessarily; people are always shown the brand in a flash and based on that a brand image is formed in people’s heads. However, the times have changed. For no reason, people can spend half an hour visiting a brand (virtually). Showing how you used to look, where you came from, what your origin is, that’s only powerful. It makes a brand authentic.

Tip for every brand: always save your old websites!

Google has found a way to visualize search results in videos. For example, someone searching for 'Health' will receive a line under the (YouTube) video with markers when the person says the word 'health'. This is known to Google as Gaudi.

Currently Google responds to our typed query, soon we can sit behind our tv and ask ‘health’. And after that ‘When was that guy talking about health?’ And even later it’ll search for all kinds of synonyms. It goes on and on. Not just for Google, but for all brands. We’ll be able to ask such questions of all brands. Like it’s always been the most normal thing on the planet. For now we’re very busy with reaction properly to the clicking and typing of our customers, but in the meantime technology is a few steps ahead of us.

Google launches its own 3d world under the name Lively. In this world users can create avatars, communicate with others and build their own spaces and objects.

All brands are building on their own 3D brand worlds. The most fortunate and online oriented brands are at the forefront, but soon every brandsite will be a 3D world, instead of the 2D websites we encounter at the moment. And eventually this will also go for the smallest brands. And in those 3D worlds we won’t need to create our own avatars, we usually come as ourselves, just like entering a store. And sometimes we dress up, give ourselves a different name, like in the theatre, playing sports or at the carnival.

Google offers American BlackBerry users the ability to search through Google Maps Mobile using voice commands. How it works is simple. By pressing 0 the map centers around the location of the user. By pressing a special button the user can pronounce the business or the name of the business (for example 'ATM' or 'cash machine'). After releasing, Google gets to work.

Brands are starting to react to everything the consumer says, how the consumer watches, what the consumer does. In time the text the consumer writers will become less and less important. Currently we’ve still built a whole society on them. That’s going to be brought down in the coming years. It’s all about reacting to your conversational partner. It’s all about the dialogue.

Since recently, Google has a new favicon, a small icon that appears in the address bar of the browser, that's shown if you've added Google to your favorites. It seems a little clumsily designed and there's been quite some debating on the web. Now Google has invited people to contribute themselves: design the Google Favicon!

The favicon is becoming an increasingly important element of the visual brand identity. Once a window is opened to the brand, but you’re active in a different window, often you’ll only see that site’s favicon. Furthermore the favicon is shown on many more places, like in RSS readers. And the use will only increase, for example for mobile applications for which the screens are already small and they can give you an overview of your favorite pages (brands) with their favicons.

Today the favicon is receiving relatively little attention. Too often the favicon is a shrunken version of the brand’s logo with horrific results. Because the logo isn’t designed for 16x16pixels. The earliest Google favicon was pretty strong (just the G in the typical Google colors), but maybe they deliberately chose such an ugly favicon to create some buzz.

By letting users design with them, Google increases their involvement with the brand. People feel flattered that they’re allowed to send something in at all, especially if it’s treated seriously thereafter. That person will be given eternal fame. Online-only brands like Google are at the forefront of this development.

This is how brands can involve consumers with the development of their visual brand identity. Now for something as small as the favicon, but in the long term also with other elements. Logo not excepting. The head office will facilitate rather than dictate. It’s part of the brand coming out: the decay of barriers between producer and consumer that every brand has to deal with and has to find a good mode for.

Through a context for East-African students, Google has developed new gadgets, small pieces of software with which users can share things (such as movies, games or information) on their weblog. It's expected that this will lead to locally applicable gadgets that help the community. The first prize is $600 and the 2nd to 6th prize winners get $350 each.

And so the focus of the world is slowly shifting to Africa. Now that China and India are developing like mad we enter the last decades in which small children will produce products for the Western world seven days a week for a paltry sum.
As developed country children will be able to go to school, grow and design products that help people in the world. Cheap manufacturing will only be available through robots or underdeveloped countries. Which will develop in turn. This long term strategy of Google anticipates this. For a few hundred dollars it’s not a bad investment.

Google starts a trial project giving out free voice mail numbers to the homeless in San Francisco. This voice mail number can be used as a call-back number for job applications, or for doctors and hospitals to keep in touch with their patient. If the project proves to be a success, Google wants to spread this service to other American cities (dc, Dutch). What a great example of socially responsible business. This is the brand coming out in its purest form. In this process the burden between manufacturer and consumer completely disappears, working transparently is second nature, and the brand more or less integrates in society. To operate responsibly, these brands make sure everyone benefits, and they use their core competences to help the weakest people in society. Socially responsible business is not about ‘look how green we are’, and then follow a new trend the next year. That is just responding to a societal (media) trend. No, socially responsible business is about the long term process of change in organizations, which after all is the only survival process. Google gives a great example here.

Google gets better at understanding what you mean if you type in a search word, and has advertisers react to this. Using the so-called Expanded Broad Matching, queries are changed in variations. For example: Chogogo Beach Resort -> Vacation Curacao, Holiday park Netherlands-> Holiday park and Vacation -> Turkey (mf, Dutch).

Brands thus start to better understand what we mean. Now through lose words, but soon they will be placed in a personal context: where are you, what are you doing, and what have you asked earlier? In the end it is all about answering the consumer’s question. After all, the consumer is not interested in the search but more in the answer to a question. The purchase of the query ‘vacation’ by a Turkey specialist might be relevant for the advertiser, but not always for the consumer. The consumer soon will rather go to a vacation specialist, a travel coaching brand, and gets a better answer to his or her question there. Even if it’s just because this type of brands know if you are on vacation right now or have just come back, and where you have been before. For that to happen the technology for smart interpreting of questions has to develop further first, and that is what we see happening here.

Google’s personal homepage, iGoogle, now is also available on mobile phones (dc, Dutch). All brands soon will be found on all possible screens, and they will adapt to size, interactive possibilities, and mobility. Those will soon be the new parameters for media (instead of radio, TV or internet).

Google integrates consumer profiles it earlier made for Google’s social network Orkut, Google’s weblog environment Blogger and Google Groups. YouTube will follow undoubtedly. With their profile, consumers can also place a picture. Then, based on this one profile, they can use all services under the same name. If someone publishes something public, the pseudonym is published instead of the real name (dc, Dutch).

Brands will recognize people, irrespective of product groups. A centrally operated CRM system with a central vision about consumer contact is necessary. New companies, based on IT, can easily make these kinds of changes. For existing companies, this is a little bit harder. In the end all brands will directly recognize us, and connect us to other people. Under our own name, or if we want under a pseudonym. Google takes the lead in this.

People who search in complicated databases at Google, see a branded search animation. Brands extend their visual identity more and more. With logo animations, with logo illustrations and also with this type of animated graphical devices. This animation is typical for Google. In a next step this type of animations will start to show personalities. The two o’s of Google for example could move around each other to show patience, irritation or relaxation. Google is ahead in using new visual characteristics. A lot more examples of other brands are to follow.

Google will link ads to multiple search queries. A visitor who searches for 'vacation Italy' will be shown ads regarding Tuscany or cheap plane tickets to Italy. If that same visitor typed in 'weather prognosis' in a previous search, Google will assume that there's a connection between 'vacation Italy' and 'weather prognosis'. Then Google will show ads regarding the weather in Italy. Brands are targeting our behavior (behavioral targeting). Currently Google combines current queries with previous ones (in one session); other brands combine our purchasing behavior (cross-selling); soon brands will combine our (earlier) queries with are behavior. And can help us more specifically because of. And thus become more relevant. Google is a good example of this, but this too is only a small step in this development.

American readers now have the possibility to react to items from Google News. For the time being, only people or organizations involved in the article can react. To be able to react, people and organizations need to be registered, and Google checks them through domain name and/or e-mail address (dc, Dutch). Brands make it possible for consumers to react to items, to write reviews, and to rank reviews, and through that involve the consumer. More and more however they will check the consumer’s true identity. This way the value of the reviews gets higher though. The consumer will not be anonymous any more, but can still use a pseudonym. The brand however knows the real person behind the pseudonym. This is a small step in that direction.

Google now lets you search in foreign languages. If you type ‘wine tasting in Bordeaux’, you can search through French web sites, and get the results back in English (gb). Brands start speaking the consumer’s language. They understand the language, the word choices, and place them in their context. Google is still in the lead, but all brands will be able to do this sooner or later.

Google now remembers, besides your last search queries, also what web sites you have visited: the web history. Google uses this information to personalize search results (dc, Dutch). Brands are getting more personal and resume the dialogue where it stopped the last time. Google is pioneering in this. You will be able to ask Google where you have been. First online, and later also in the physical world. Computers are very good in remembering, whereas people tend to forget things every now and then. We like to leave remembering to technology. In the future we will find it normal for brands to remember every brand-consumer interaction, and share that knowledge with us. This is a small step in that direction.