Google is marking its 20th anniversary this week, and it goes without saying that the tech giant’s innovations have become part of the fabric of our culture. To celebrate, Campaign spoke to Steve Vranakis, the executive creative director of Google Creative Lab and president of D&AD, to round up some of Google’s creative marketing highlights over the past two decades.
Parisian Love film
This was one of the first TV ads Google created and ran during the 2010 Super Bowl. It used a simple user interface but was packed full of emotional storytelling, and had a big impact both inside and outside the company.
Google Year in Search 2016
It’s become an annual tradition for the company to create a film showcasing the year just gone and what Google searches tell us about the world. They’re emotional and showcase a full range of human life, while expressing the values of Google.
Google Outside digital outdoor
Google created real-time digital posters across London. Three thousand stories were uploaded four times a day with 12,000 different pieces of information cards with local, contextual content. It’s simple but surprising.
Google doodles
This doodle ran in August 2017 to mark hip hop’s 44th birthday and was one of the most successful doodles ever. It was created with genre pioneer Fab 5 Freddy and Cey Adams, a famous graffiti artist and the founding creative director of Def Jam records. It featured interactive turntables and celebrated hip hop’s incredible cultural impact.
YouTube Space Lab film
This was an open invitation to young scientists and inventors: what would they want to learn if they could perform an experiment in space? They submitted ideas via YouTube, and the winning experiments – judged by a panel including Stephen Hawking – went on to be performed on the International Space Station and live-streamed to the world.
Chrome SBTV film
This film was created to tell the story of how then-amateur filmmaker Jamal Edwards started uploading his videos to the web and went on to build and launch a new youth media channel: SBTV.
Chrome Web Lab film
This was an exhibition at London’s Science Museum, where five interactive experiments brought the magic of the web to life through Chrome.
Performing Arts site
Google partnered with some of the most historic opera houses, theatres and philharmonic venues from all over the world to take users beyond the best seat in the house and put them on stage in 360-degrees.
Inside Abbey Road site
Abbey Road Studios is an iconic studio that’s inaccessible to most people. So Google partnered with them to enable everyone into Abbey Road to meet some of the famous artists who had recorded there and hear their amazing stories.
Project Jacquard film
Jacquard is an experimental wearable technology platform. In 2015 Google introduced this new idea to the world through a film, a site and the announcement of the first fashion product collaboration with Levi’s.