It may be Yahoo that has the Hollywood connections, but it’s Google that knows how to be a celebrity.
Corporations are legal entities, on par with people in the eyes of the law. Yet most people view corporations as faceless, looming bullies. One can read news stories where an individual is maligned by an “evil” corporation, but a corporation being wrongfully sued by an individual doesn’t garner the same sympathy if it shows up as news at all. It’s hard to feel sympathetic toward something that is quite inhuman in discernible characteristics. Celebrities, on the other hand, are very human; often in an exagerrated fashion.
From its oft-quoted “Don’t be evil” slogan to its mission statement of “organizing the world’s information”, Google demonstrates personality. Its trademark simple style is part of it. The conversational tone for error messages, explanations, announcements – even its annual report – are another. Google has an eclectic style that makes it readily identifiable and differentiable in the minds of millions of users.
The product of committees and hierarchies are often dry and uninspiring at best, and verbose morass of uselessness at its worst. I imagine inside Google there is but one layer between the engineers doing the work and the outside world using their products. Add a leadership that can communicate a consistent vision and inspire, and one can see why Google channels the employees’ personality so well, yet possess a common style.
This has benefits for Google, because people favour what they like, product quality aside. Google varies between being slightly obnoxious yet amusing, to humble and brilliant. Nothing that people would take offence to in a coworker, and unusual enough to be memorable. Being entertaining and a “nice corporation” builds up reputational capital that it can spend on building products or taking actions that others with less goodwill (e.g. Microsoft) would face rejection for.
Other successful “Web 2.0″ companies have similar personalities, often just through blog updates by the creators. This corporate “personality” works well for these companies that depend on individual decisions, people alone in front of a computer. However, I imagine that when Google’s Chief Food Officer did his presentation, instead of the expected Chief Financial Officer, it didn’t amuse Wall Street as much as hoped. While individuals may like “interesting”, large corporations (committees and hierarchies) don’t.
Back to the celebrity angle. Another celebrity strategy that Google takes is to let failures die out of boredom. Don’t hide it (that makes it interesting to talk about), but don’t keep beating the drum about how great it will be after reality (or public opinion) says otherwise. Orkutz was a failed experiment that just painlessly faded away. For an easy comparison target, look at some of Microsoft’s more problematic ventures (Vista, early versions of Windows CE, VS2005, the Office and dinosaurs ad campaign). Microsoft has many successes, but how many mediocre products have they released to a lasting fanfare worthy of a king?
There are also the creative “leaks” from Google, the early releases of software put out then retracted due to volume. While accidents and misjudgements happen, there have been so many that it is hard to believe that they are wholly innocuous. Celebrities’ relationship with tabloids and magazine trivia is a similar: maintaining visibility. Google needs to always appear in motion to keep people interested. So products come out not just to start getting feedback, but it also keeps Google interesting and involved in people’s mind.
Clearly, I’m a Google fan. However, it isn’t just for its technical talent (considerable), but also for the minds driving Google’s marketing. Those minds demonstrate remarkably clear understanding of how to appeal to people without resorting to the falseness so typical of marketing and salesmanship.
