Stupid Google, with your commercial that made me cry
Huh - I always thought all software marketing had to be terrible. Weird.
Hello Gobbledeers:
I’m minding my own business, glancing in the general direction of the ads running during college basketball, thinking that maybe I should switch to AT&T and get me a Capital One card. Then this comes on:
Go - watch that Google commercial. I’ll be here when you get back.
I was engrossed watching it. Then I felt the water works turn on. Not a full flood. But the moisture level increased.
And it hit me — I was getting choked up over software marketing.
The ad is for closed captioning functionality included with Google Meet, and if you ignored my request to watch the commercial, it’s about an actual Google employee - the son of deaf parents - who Google Meets his parents while he holds their grandson, and they can “hear” him because of the automatic captioning.
And fine, it’s emotionally manipulative, and I mean that in a good way. When you bust out the grandson and the deaf grandparents, c’mon. But they also hit on the “why” of the product feature - it matters because it allows you to have an emotional connection while videoconferencing.
Which seems super obvious when I’m typing that, but look at this homepage for Verbit, which sells captioning software:
It’s fine, right? Middle-of-the-road enterprise messaging. “Create impact” is pretty vague, but I get it. But the whole thing is basically saying, “we sell transcription and captioning software.” Again, fine.
(What’s not fine: “Our customers are offered” is passive voice, and if you only do one thing today {and you should not only do one thing today} it should be to comb through your website and make sure there are exactly zero instances where you are using passive voice. And yes, I almost wrote “where passive voice is used,” which would’ve been comical. Comical for English majors.)
In my experience trying to get a software company to address the emotional outcomes of using their software is like trying to get you mom’s 4th husband to open up about his first 3 marriages. It’s uncomfortable, and you’re not sure you really want to hear the answer.
When I was working at Doodle, we actually went through an exercise to dig into the emotions of our users so we wouldn’t be painted into a corner talking about a “scheduling platform.”
As we worked through the possibilities back in the fall of 2020 (which of course took place over a few weeks, because like all companies everything takes forever), I received a note from our Synagogue letting us know that although there would be no services for the holidays that year, we could schedule 15 minutes with our family to come in and just quietly reflect. And they sent a Doodle link to the entire congregation so they could schedule a timeslot that worked for them.
My wife and I set up a time, went there and had 15 minutes of peace during a time when things were pretty miserable here in New York. I’m not a religious guy, but being there was surprisingly emotional.
And that’s when we figured out what Doodle, a free scheduling tool, does for people: it offers a way to build connection. Connections start by getting together. Doodle is how personal connections begin.
Amazing.
We didn’t use that.
Which is fine - coincidentally enough Doodle just re-branded and re-launched their site and they’ve repositioned themselves as an enterprise scheduling tool, around the concept of “when”. They did a great job.
The issue at most companies isn’t coming up with users’ emotional response to the product. Oddly, that’s the easy part.
The difficult part is getting the team comfortable with using emotion in software marketing.
And yes, I know that enterprise is different (er, “different’) than marketing to individuals. Except that for 10 years the industry has been saying “we sell to individuals, not to companies.”
Google’s ad was created by the Google Brand Studio, their in-house brand agency. And as I was doing a little research for this piece, I came across this graphic from Google Brand Studio about how marketers can set their products apart:
That graphic is from something they wrote in 2018. But it’s also the outline for how they created the commercial that choked me up.
That they wrote that at all is the key to unlocking how you bring emotion into your software marketing. It starts with believing that it matters. That understanding how the product fits into the user’s life will provide insights into why the person is using it.
And most importantly, “Don’t be afraid.”
Fear holds so many of us back (myself included, at the front of the line). Here’s the good news - the bar is set so low. The answer is right in that graphic:
Tell the story
Focus on why
Don’t be afraid
Hoping you can make me cry soon.