Effective Marketing Campaign and Branding: Google+

I am very, very excited for Google+, a new social-networking website created by Google. The majority of this excitement can be traced to a great marketing campaign by Google.

 Now normally, the thought of attaching myself to yet another social-networking website is exhausting in itself. Making the switch from Myspace to Facebook was a huge hassle, and the only reason I was determined to do it was because Facebook imitated my real social life better than Myspace did, and therefore might prove to be more useful.

Since then, Facebook has ruled the social-networking arena, becoming as irreplaceable to social-networks as Google is to search engines.

So far, Facebook has met all that I require in a social network with the exception of one annoying feature:  everyone is your “friend” on Facebook, with no effective differentiation between family, co-workers, or your best friends.

Google noticed this flaw, and that is Google+ comes in. And I heard about this new network by watching their Youtube advertisement: 

This advertisement was powerful because it addresses exactly the problems I found so frustrating in Facebook. According to its website: “You share different things with different people. So sharing the right stuff with the right people shouldn't be a hassle. Circles makes it easy to put your friends from Saturday night in one circle, your parents in another, and your boss in a circle by himself - just like real life.”

Joe Wilcox, from betanewscom, explains why Google+ is a marketing sensation in his article which can be found here.  He explains why in a marketing sense, even naming the service “Google+” is an savvy move on Google’s part. 

“In marketing, companies seek to control one word and have that associated with their brands. For Mercedes-Benz it's "prestige" or "safety" for Volvo -- "driving" for BMW. ” 

For Google, its search. In fact, Google is even more effective in word ownership because it can also function as a verb: to Google something is to search for it on the internet.

This is extremely effective branding, and it helps make Google the king of search engines. He continues: 

“Facebook is never going to be a successful verb, so the company craftily created the "Like" button. Facebook wasn't the first cloud service to use Like, but it's the owner now.

Google's marketing coup could be "plus" associated with Google+ and +1, where you add someone or something to you. Plus is positive, it's more. The connotations are hugely aspirational. You could Like someone or be the plus -- be something more.”

Congratulations for Google and its marketing team for producing so much buzz so quickly about their new network. I am excited to use and and can't wait until it becomes available for everyone to use.