From: Google Creative Lab, USA
A film for google’s newly launched tablet computer nexus 7 begins with a boy searching for glossophobia, the fear of public speaking. Seen throughout with the seven-inch tablet in his hand, the boy uses its features and discovers ways to get over this fear. He watches the king’s speech, youtube-s franklin roosevelt’s speeches and reads articles and books on the subject. The brace-wearing boy then delivers a confident speech in his classroom, only to earn a smile from a girl, after which he searches for ‘how to ask a girl out.’ the spot ends with the tagline ‘made for what matters.’
Why we like
Oratory is given much more respect in the West than our culture. Public speaking is a skill as important if not more than say Mathematics. It is regarded as the true test of a person’s confidence, presence of mind and knowledge.(Little wonder why the film The King’s Speech bagged the Academy Awards it did last year.) By making it the focus, this film is set to impact millions across US and UK, two of Google’s biggest markets.
Wait, we were supposed to give you a critique of the advertisement first, but this is what a good story does to you. In under 90 seconds, Google has already given us an endearing character likely to stay with us for a while. The hero is the underdog – a brace-wearing, jittery struggler. He’s someone every third of us (okay, many more than that) was in our school days. But this underdog is fairly rich, for he uses a Rs 13,000 tablet at will.
The film draws us into his world – his mother, his heroes and eventually his love interest. The story unfolds unmistakably with careful odes to the product being advertised –in fact there’s more screen time for the Nexus than the boy. And like we’ve seen in many films for Google search, one ‘search’ leads to another to spin out a tale. It’s a cliché for the company now, but who’s complaining?
This film comes from the tech giant’s in-house powerhouse of ideas, Google Creative Labs, which markets everything from Android and Docs to YouTube. With tablets, things that more or less look and behave like their predecessors and successors, only such distinguished efforts in storytelling will stand out.
The last film for a Google product that stunned us was the award winning ‘Tanjore painting’ spot for Chrome from BBH India, but we were already using the browser then. Incidentally, we came across this one just after placing an order for the tablet. Surely this writer will one day give a speech on being a long-serving Google fanboy.
To watch this film, look up this easylink: bit.ly/Nexus7ad
