Extending the life of a creative project
Every year, Google delivers its data-driven Year in Search video to recap what the world searched for. Videos are expensive to produce and time-consuming. But to improve its lifespan, it’s worth exploring how to repurpose In 2019 and 2020, we wanted to push the boundaries of how far we could take the concept.
What I did
2019 YIS video
Role: Content strategy
Company: Google’s Brand Studio
2019 YIS digital strategy
Role: Content strategy + editor
Company: Google’s Brand Studio
2019 Executive card
Role: Brand Writer + editor
Company: Google’s Brand Studio
Problem
Every year Google shows the world what its searching for in the now-famous Year in Search video. But videos are expensive to produce, so it’s worth looking into how the story can live on in different formats.
Solution
In 2019, on a whim, a small group pitched including a digital component that could expand on the highlights posted throughout the year - a piece meant to support the Year in Search video.
Towards the end of the year, we revisited the YIS theme in Sundar’s executive holiday greeting card - helping to package the story line up nicely.
Impact
The digital experience won a Webby Award.
The theme provided a lot of creative fodder for the holiday card, speeding up ideation and production to just a couple of days rather than weeks.
Year in Search
Role: Content production
Every year, Google delivers its data-driven Year in Search video to recap what the world searched for.
In 2019, on a hunch, we searched trends in the data around heroes.
Brand Studio partners with the Media Lab team to look in the backend to understand what users are looking for (its front end is the data found in Google Trends). We use the data from search queries to drive the storyline, write the script, and shape the visuals.
As a general approach, we lean on user generated content and backfill with public or stock footage to creatively reinforce the idea that this content is what users are looking for - not Google.
Although my part was small - I was fully absorbed in the theme and process.
Expanding into digital
Role: Strategy
The Year in Search content traditionally lives on about.google, YouTube, and is amplified on social media. In 2019, we added a digital element on google.com, that linked to a landing page and invited people to view the trends named in the video in a slick timeline. It also happened to win a Webby Award.
Extending into the physical
Role: Copywriter
Continuing on the the Year in Search theme, I worked with Design to deliver a physical expression of the YIS sentiment in holiday hards from Sundar, Google’s CEO.
Our brief concluded: “Want them to stop and pause and think about their relationship with Google - understand what we do and how we want to wish them well. How we are helpful and how we are are making a change in the world and impacting the world and want them to know but not by bragging by showing, or by sharing or by including them along they way. Needs to impact them without talking about ourselves.”
“Connections between our products or what we are doing - our world - in a very crisp way described in a card.
It shouldn’t feel like it’s about us - we are the steward. Talking about our products what our do - that our platforms and our services enable and what we are doing to help without bragging about ourselves but it needs to be meaningful”
