Exclusive: Watch Google's moving TVC on the power of search

It's a simple film.

In a nutshell, a young girl is talking to her grandfather, who is reminiscing about great fun times with his childhood friend from what was then undivided India, and regrets that he has not seen him since he left for India at the time of partition.

Enter Google. The girl uses Google, in an entirely plausible and believable way, to first track down the shop, then the address, and then a phone number. She calls the phone, which is picked up by a young man, who hands over the phone to an old man, clearly, the childhood friend. The young man uses Google to figure out visa requirements for India, and so on.

[caption id="attachment_1227511" align="alignleft" width="380"] The childhood friends are united.[/caption]

Finally, the childhood friends are united.

It's a 3½ minute film, made simply and without trappings and fanfare. As viewers see the film, they see, without being sold to, what Google is and what Google can do. While the film is, without a doubt, a commercial, the 'sell' is so soft that it makes the TVC supremely entertaining, leaving the viewer wanting to see it again and again.

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How did this film come about?

Abhijit Avasthi, NCD, Ogilvy India, explains. "While search is an extremely integral part of people's lives, there are still a lot of people who need to be educated about search, especially about the innovations that search offers, and they are not aware of. Especially when it comes to finding practical information. We had to bring about the ease of use and the joy of finding everyday, practical information that search can give you. That was the task. Google has always been a warm, emotional brand that has been simple in its approach. It forms an emotional connect with the people who use it, and hence, the treatment of the film. While Google is top of mind, we wanted to bring it in to mainstream conversation. Hence, the film needed to play on such a huge scale, and strike the right chords."

Avasthi's client, Sandeep Menon, Director - Marketing, Google India concurs. "Indiahas well over 150 million Internet users, and most of them use Google in various formats, be it from desktops, or mobile devices. We wanted to strike up a conversation to showcase the different uses of Google, and at the same time, tell magical stories that show why our users love the product. One of our core philosophies is that our users are smart and intelligent. Hence, the attempt was to have a conversation and tell users that they can do a lot more, and a lot quicker, by showcasing some of the innovations that allow the product to be used in different ways," he says.

"We have always wanted to do something like this. In fact, we have been planning this for about three to four months. Honestly, we would have loved to launch it much earlier. There's no specific intent with the timing. Just that it took us a long time to be ready with something that we wanted to share. From a performance marketing perspective, this film follows our 'Start Searching India' campaign that was launched last July. The campaign showcased many of the new innovations that Google search has rolled out. Innovations like flight search, theatre timings for movies, language translation, etc, which help users save time, and get to-the-point answers to their most common queries. Many of our users have not picked up on these. With this campaign, we hope to get traction on that," Menon adds.

What will the film do? Well, for one, get people to understand all that can be done with Google. To begin with, as people hear about this film (and hear about it they will) they will search, in Google, for the 'Google film'.

Great stuff from Google, aided and abetted by Ogilvy.