Sunday, January 08, 2006
Google PR: give away everything, say nothing
I'm amazed at Google's sustained improvement with product marketing. Most revoutionary, I find, is the way they aprpoach PR and work with the media. Which is to say, not much. Their engineering philosophy in regards to distributed computing is progressive in its simplicity, their "perpetual beta" release of products via the Web is changing the way people create software.
They give away mostly everything for free, and are the darlings of the entire blogosphere, talking about them constantly (case in point: me and this post). But the tightlipped, say-nothing tactic has allowed them to make dramatic introductions of their new stuff. Even pundit speculation can't accurately predict what Sergey and Larry are going to debut at a conference, like last fall's Web 2.0 Conference or the current Consumer Electronics Show. Other large companies for years have suffered from leaks from both overzealous press and internal resources. Many have even planted a few such landmines themselves in the hopes of jump-starting interest.
When compared with traditionalist public relations strategy, Google's very unorthodox standoffishness might have resulted in a nightmare situation: negative consumer perception, media criticism, or even worse, apathy from both/either. But Google's not the average company.
It's allowed them to drop some major bombs, like yesterday's announement of Google Pack and Google Video Store at CES. Even the company's extremely limited number of most trusted press sources, who are afforded only the most miniscule amounts of information about a new product launch, honor their info embargoes.
Maybe it's because there realistically aren't that many people working there (about 3,000, but even that's an undivulged quantity). Proportionately, overseeing fewer people means more control and fewer leaks. And they're devoted to keeping the flow of info quiet. And it's working for them.
They give away mostly everything for free, and are the darlings of the entire blogosphere, talking about them constantly (case in point: me and this post). But the tightlipped, say-nothing tactic has allowed them to make dramatic introductions of their new stuff. Even pundit speculation can't accurately predict what Sergey and Larry are going to debut at a conference, like last fall's Web 2.0 Conference or the current Consumer Electronics Show. Other large companies for years have suffered from leaks from both overzealous press and internal resources. Many have even planted a few such landmines themselves in the hopes of jump-starting interest.
When compared with traditionalist public relations strategy, Google's very unorthodox standoffishness might have resulted in a nightmare situation: negative consumer perception, media criticism, or even worse, apathy from both/either. But Google's not the average company.
It's allowed them to drop some major bombs, like yesterday's announement of Google Pack and Google Video Store at CES. Even the company's extremely limited number of most trusted press sources, who are afforded only the most miniscule amounts of information about a new product launch, honor their info embargoes.
Maybe it's because there realistically aren't that many people working there (about 3,000, but even that's an undivulged quantity). Proportionately, overseeing fewer people means more control and fewer leaks. And they're devoted to keeping the flow of info quiet. And it's working for them.
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