Ad Age: The Google 5

7/31/2019 Ad Age: The Google 5

1/6

By: Teressa Iezzi Published: September 27, 2010

Tweet 6 10

Erin Mulvehill

Google Five: (l.) Tristan Smith, J. Smith,Anthony Cafaro, Michael Chang and JohnathanJarvis.

DIGITAL

Meet the Google 5, the Team Behind'Parisian Love' Super Bowl Spot

Search Giant Finds Fresh, Tech-Forward Talent in Ad and Design Students Recruitedto Work With Its Creative Lab

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Like many successful brands born of the digital age, Google hasn't

been known for advertising, and certainly not TV advertising. So its appearance in this year's Super

Bowl was something of a surprise. This is, you'll recall, the company whose founders vowed that it

would be a cold day in hell before they'd do a TV commercial and whose chief executive called

advertising "the last bastion of unaccountable spending in corporate America."

What Jesus-like figure at which of Google's ad agencies had converted the company to a big-ticket

TV advertiser? Had Google started to work with McGarryBowen?

No, the Super Bowl spot, "Parisian Love," was created

in-house by the "Google 5," a handful of students

recruited from ad and design schools. The 5 program is

an experiment launched last year by the Google

Creative Lab and its executive creative director, Robert

Wong. The company sent a call out to 12 schoolssearching for interesting talent who would work inside

the Creative Lab for a year and then be sent out unto

the industry. So, with the Google 5, the company gets

new creative blood and the industry gets young talent

that is schooled in Google, and, by extension, the

post-digital/new advertising way -- tech-forward,

open-source, collaborative, and smart.

Mr. Wong says the 5 initiative was motivated by two things: "getting fresh, awesome talent in the

Creative Lab," and "fueling the ecosystem of the industry."

"It feels like every agency I talk to wants more digital expertise," said Mr. Wong. "The thinking was

that, 'Hey we have great talent that can come in and play with all the tools here and then agencies

will get people that feel confident about all the tools at their disposal.' And of course it works for us

because that way they know our tools and we can participate in the whole ecosystem."

Mr. Wong and the Lab team received around 400 applications for the five spots in the program. The

original plan was to recruit a designer, an art director, a writer, a filmmaker and a programmer, but

after vetting the candidates in a process Mr. Wong likens to "casting a reality show," the team

selected two writers, Tristan Smith and J. Smith; two designers, Anthony Cafaro and Jonathan

Jarvis; and a programmer, Michael Chang.

The team stood out for being talented and "multidextrous" and, in some cases, for their self-initiated

creations: Mr. Jarvis wrote and directed an animated web film called "The Crisis of Credit

Ad & Marketing News Register Now | Login

Advanced Search

Search Advertising AgeJust updated! Ad Age Marketer Contact Listavailable for purchase

HOME THIS WEEK'S ISSUE MOBILE APP EVENTS WEBCASTS BRANDED CONTENT TREND REPORTS POWER 150 HELP!

Switch back to

ShareShare 4

BIG IN PRINT

The Creativity 50

Blue Moon Brewer Keith Villa: Most Influential

Beer Man You've Never Heard Of?

Marketers Bow Olympic-Size Pushes

AT&T Ad Spending Drop Signals Shift for

Telecoms

Coke's Jonathan Mildenhall and Pio Schunker

on Spreading Happiness

How Cheil's Creative Team Revolutionized

Retail

RELATED CONTENT

Google's Robert Wong Wants to 'Get Technology

Out of the Way'

Through Google Glasses, Babak Parviz Envisions

Brighter Future

Google Explores 'Untranslatable' Words in WebFilm for Input Tools

In Wake of Developers Conference, Google

Scores Two Hits on Viral Chart

Google Introduces Nexus Tablet, Stepping Up

Apple Challenge

MOST READ

What Would Don Draper's Salary Be If He Workedin an Agency Today?

Lost Your Smartphone in a Bar Again? Maybe YouNeed a 'Drunk Phone'

Survey: Which Brands Are Dream Clients for

Meet Google 5, Team Behind 'Parisian Love' Super Bowl Ad | D... http://adage.com/article/digital/meet-google-5-team-parisian-

of 6 7/13/12 3:45


2/6

Visualized" that explained the Wall Street meltdown in a simple, graphically compelling way and

that's been viewed over a million times online; Mr. Smith, while nominally a writer, impressed with a

series of 3-D photographs he created as a side project. But the whole team demonstrated the key

characteristic of, er, "Googliness," which Mr. Wong describes as an amalgam of "ambition, humility,

altruism, entrepreneurialism and sense of scale -- big thinkers who feel like they can really impact a

lot of people."

In June 2009, the 5 arrived at Google and were immersed immediately in every project that the Lab

had cooking and in the aggressively open, collaborative Google working style.

"It wasn't like, 'OK, here's your little project and we'll work on the important things,'" said Mr. Jarvis.

"They were like, 'We need minds on this problem, you guys come and work on it.' So we were

working on the same projects as the creative leads and working right alongside them; it was up to

us to sink or swim, and to contribute as much as we could."

Within the group and in the larger Lab environment, "there's very little screen privacy," Mr. Cafaro

said. "There was always someone over your shoulder saying, 'Ooh, what if we tried this?'" Fresh out

of school, the 5 noted that this kind of collaborative environment was a significant change from their

experiences to date. "I think ad school trained you to be very competitive; there's this kind of killer

instinct they try and create in you," said Tristan Smith. "You're always pitching your work against

teams. I sort of had to reprogram myself here."

The 5 ended up working on a wide range of projects, from launching the Nexus phone --

contributing to all facets of the product including packaging, pre-roll ads on Hulu and the boot-up

animation on the phone -- to the Google Christmas card ("everything here scales!" said TristanSmith).

And, of course, search.

How it all began

What eventually became "Parisian Love" and a Super Bowl hit started out as a key Google brief, to

"remind people what they love about Google search," but also to showcase some engine particulars

they might not know about. "There were all these features that the engineers showed me that I think

no one really knew about, like being able to type your flight number right into the search bar without

going to an airline's site," said Mr. Wong. "So it was about showing people how they could search in

other ways and how empowering that could be." Mr. Wong said several different ideas were floated

until something caught -- the idea that it wasn't just one search and one answer, but a lifetime of

searches. The 5 team ran with the idea of a search as representative of a moment in a life, inspired

by Mr. Wong's maxim that "the best results don't show up in a search engine, they show up in your

life."

They worked to keep the idea pared down to keep the resulting spot "like theater of the mind," and

presented it to the search-marketing team. Mr. Wong said, "Everyone loved it and wanted to share

it." The spot appeared online in late 2009. It was an engineer who originally suggested putting the

ad on the Super Bowl. "For Google, it's a crazy idea," Mr. Wong said. "At the end of the day, the

founders loved the spot and they were excited by the idea of more people getting to see it. It was a

one off, it was random. But it was surprising and that's what made it so cool."

The tenure of the original 5 came to an end this June, at which time the Lab ended up hiring Tristan

Smith. Messrs. Cafaro and Jarvis. J. Smith got a job at Wieden & Kennedy, Portland and Mr. Chang

is a free-agent programmer who recently created the much-discussed "Google Doodle" that

augured the September launch of Google Instant. He is currently working on projects for Barnes &

Noble.

Up next: another group of "talented and nice" polymaths that includes Grant Gold, a designer out ofSchool of Visual Arts; Chris Trumbull and Natalie Hammel, writers from VCU; George Michael

Brower, a technologist from UCLA Design Media Arts; and Chris Lauritzen, a designer/"wild card"

from Art Center College of Design's Media Design program.

Mr. Wong says the fresh 5 have been thrown into a range of projects covering search, Google TV,

Chrome and other undisclosed ventures.

"The Lab is very flat and open," said Mr. Lauritzen, "which gives it a kind of chaos that can feel a

little overwhelming at times. It's also what makes it such a cool place to be, especially for someone

Agencies -- and Which Are Nightmares?

Conde Nast Shakes Up Crucial Corporate SalesDivision

Brad Pitt Has a Brother, Doug, and He's Made aVideo for Virgin Mobile

MOST COMMENTED

MOST EMAILED

CREATIVITY PICKS

McCann New York's First Work for

Ikea Imagines a World Without

Textiles

The first work for Ikea out of McCann New York is

a little bit "hard" to watch.

Lessons on how to create compelling and

fan-earning campaigns on the world's most

popular social media platform


of 6 7/13/12 3:45


3/6

Cracking Viral Code: Look at Your Ads. Now Look at Old Spice100 Leading Media CompaniesFTC's Top Consumer Cop Likes Personalization of WebTwitter Boosts Marketer Reach With Plan to Blast Promoted AdsAP Circular App Coming to Help Print Compete With Coupon Pure PlaysVibrant Media Gears Up for Possible Public Stock OfferingYour Media Questions Answered: Out of Home

Life in a Three-Channel UniverseWhat Do We Want? Media! When Do We Want It? Now!What the Media Agency of the Future Will Look Like

learning how the creative industry works. There is a lot of amazing stuff going on, and it's all

accessible." Already, Mr. Brower has contributed to one of the creative highlights of the year,

interactive video "The Wilderness Downtown," a collaboration between director Chris Milk and

Google's Aaron Koblin, The Lab, B-Reel, Radical Media and designer/developer Mr. Doob.

The Arcade Fire coup and the Super Bowl spot are part of a growing body of work out of the Lab

created in collaboration with an array of partners, agency and otherwise. The Lab built on the

success of "Parisian Love" with more Search Stories, working with Pixar to create a "Toy Story

3"-themed spot and launching a web tool allowing the public to create their own search story.

Quite a track record

Much of the Lab's recent work has centered on the Chrome browser. In May, the group worked with

BBH , New York, on "Speed Tests," which pitted the browser against the likes of sound waves and

a potato-gun-fired potato in a series of real-time, in-camera demonstrations.

It's an admirable track record for a creative entity just 3 years old. Former Ogilvy co-President Andy

Berndt was recruited in September 2007 to build the new unit; Mr. Wong, an ex-Arnold exec

creative director and VP-creative at Starbucks, joined in 2008. But this is Google, after all, so when

Mr. Wong tells you the ultimate goal for the Lab is to "win the Nobel Peace Prize," both of you can

keep a straight face.

The Lab is now a 50-person unit, working closely with Google marketing and with a growing roster

of agencies including BBH, Cutwater and Johannes Leonardo among others.

Mr. Wong offers a long and a short version of the Lab's mandate. "The Google Creative Lab is asmall team that strives to rethink marketing across every kind of media, currently existing or not --

with Google as its sole client. Our mission is to 'remind the world what it is that they love about

Google.' Our job is to manage and steward the brand, find new ways to communicate the

company's innovations, intentions and ideals, and do work of which we can all be proud. We want

people ambitious and crazy enough to think we can actually change the world." The short version:

"Do epic shit."

The part about reminding people why they love Google, though, can be considered one of today's

more interesting brand challenges: to take a company that was built on and whose name represents

one thing -- search -- and craft a brand persona as the company expands in size and scope. And

occasionally scares people. "It's human nature to root for the underdog," said Mr. Wong. "When you

become successful, it's about, how do you exceed people's expectations?"

The Lab, said Mr. Wong, wants to take the processes and philosophies that made Google's

engineers successful -- intense focus on the consumer and user experience, flat operatingstructure, focus on prototyping and on an iterative process, scale and tech innovation -- and apply

them to the marketing process. If Mr. Wong could push further, industry-wide, he said it would be

toward "more listening, less talking; more feeling, less thinking, more doing, less promising, more

inventing, less polishing."

Request a Reprint of this article.

MORE STORIES FROM THIS ISSUE

See the entire Sep 27, 2010 Ad Age print edition

TAKE THE SURVEY

Weigh In on Advertising-Job Trends

Are you satisfied with your career outlook? Has

your salary changed? Do you intend to switch jobs

in the next year?

Take the 24 Seven/Ad Age Salary and Job

Satisfaction Survey and help us uncover theadvertising/marketing industry's job market and

compensation trends.


of 6 7/13/12 3:45


4/6

RSS feed of comments

Sort by Date | Popularity

Matthew Saganski

Grand Rapids, MI

# 5 - Sep 28, 2010 12:29 PM

STEVE

SCHILDWACHTER

CHICAGO, IL

# 4 - Sep 28, 2010 8:27 AM

Kate Bryant

New York, NY

# 3 - Sep 27, 2010 12:24 PM

Cristian Gonzales

San Francisco, CA

# 2 - Sep 27, 2010 11:03 AM

ERNEST LUPINACCI

MAPLEWOOD, NJ

# 1 - Sep 27, 2010 7:33 AM

COMMENTS

Comments are displaying: tree

0Reply

It's rare (maybe unheard of) to have a reality show-style of employee recruitment

that actually works. Many companies use highly-paid corporate psychologists to

submit potential employees to psychological profiling in order to get the rightpeople on the bus." Still, hiring and firing remain at the same level as thecompanies without psychological profiling. Forget advertising. In terms of

employee recruiting, Google may be on to something brilliant here ...

http://actionad.wordpress.com/2010/09/03/how-to-write-a-tagline-that-sells/

0Reply

Great reporting, Teressa. Reading the description of how they created the spot that

ran on the Super Bowl, it seems more certain that we can call them, "Google,

traditional advertiser." Their "agency" structure is quite different, but the way they

arrive at the work is traditional. More on this: http://admajoremblog.blogspot.com

/2010/02/in-defense-of-google-traditional.html

-3+20Reply

One woman out of 10 hires? I thought Google was more progressive than that.

-20Reply

I wasn't too impressed with the Parisian Dream commercial. It was a good

commercial, but not something fantastic. However, what Google Chrome did with

Arcade Fire...THAT was incredible.

-1+20Reply

I've met and worked with the Google 5 while consulting for the Creative Lab - if

advertising has a future, it'll be written by guys like them. Ernest Lupinacci CCO

Ernest Industries


of 6 7/13/12 3:45


5/6

YOUR COMMENTS:

Ad Age reserves the right to moderate, delete and/or republish comments. Maximum length of

comments is 500 words.

Your Answer

LOGIN

To submit comments you must be registered.

Please login orregister now.

User Name

Password

Post Comment

Can Lego be theanswer for GenerationN?

Buick Verano pitchedby Peyton Manning

Chevy's 'Love It orReturn It' campaignechoes similarprograms in 2009

Hyundai sued overElantra fuel economyad claims

CMO Close-Up withMatt Bowman,VP-demandgeneration,Teleperformance USA

How can marketersbest use mobile togrow their brands andincrease theirpipelines?

JDA Software usessocial media topromote userconference

The CRM-marketingautomation connection:An invaluable asset

Visa, MasterCard settleantitrust case

Viacom, DirecTVstandoff heads intouncharted territory

Europe: When losingmoney makes sense

Who's paying forJPMorgan's loss?

Macy's court battle withMartha begins Friday

DirecTV subscribersmay lose Viacomchannels

Publishers stilllaunching printmagazines

ISSUE Project Room isoffering naming rights

Visa, MasterCard in$7B settlement

Dow surges 204 oneconomic optimism

China growth slows;the world worries

JPMorgan profit dropson 'Whale' of a loss

2013 Ford Mustang

2013 Ford Fiesta

2012 Honda CR-V vs.2012 Toyota RAV4 small-SUV comparison

Do small, fuel-efficientcars compromisesafety?

AdAge.com Resources Services Columns News

News from our Ad Age Partners


of 6 7/13/12 3:45


6/6

More from Ad Age: Creativity | AdAge DataCenter | AdAgeChina | AdAge on Campus

Copyright 1994-2013 Crain Communications | Privacy Statement | Terms of Use | Contact Us

Home

This Week's Issue

DataCenter

Jobs

Events

TalentWorks

Ad Age Events

White Papers & Marketing

Information

360 Multiplatform Media

Help Center

Subscriptions

Media Kit

List Rental

Download Current Edition

Print Archive

Rance Crain

Al Ries

The Media Guy

Guest Columnists

Agency News

CMO Strategy

DataCenter

Digital

Hispanic Marketing

Blogs & Columnists


of 6 7/13/12 3:45

Documents

Ad Age: The Google 5