Google announced it is kicking off a series of outdoor billboard ads to promote its Google Apps to businesses. The search company announced the campaign on its official blog.
The theme of the ads focuses on the idea of a company-coined phrase: “going Google.”
Andy Berndt, managing director, Google Creative Lab, wrote in the blog post, “Here at Google, we have a term for the moment a company realizes there’s a better way and goes for it: ‘going Google.’”
Berndt posted, “We want every organization to understand the benefits of going Google, so today we’re telling the story in a new way.” That new way includes outdoor billboards in four cities — Boston, Chicago, New York and San Francisco — that will change every weekday for four weeks.
The look of the ads is decidedly low tech. Plain Courier text appears in basic black on a white background, with a link at the bottom in blue: Google.com/appsatwork.
The company is also running interactive banner ads on BusinessWeek, Engadget, Forbes.com, AOL Money & Finance and LinkedIn.
In addition, Google is also advertising its Google Search Appliance to businesses through interactive banners on sites such as TechCrunch, but that campaign was not mentioned in Berndt’s post. Google could not be reached for comment, but the ads are significant since Google has traditionally been reluctant to use advertising to promote its products and has done very little advertising to date. However, that may be changing. Mashable reported last year that Google bought ad space on LinkedIn to promote its Chrome browser.
