Watch: If it's an ad from Google, it's got to be a tearjerker
Few tech companies do as a good a job of combining a philanthropic mission with a business message.
“The future of marketing is philanthropy,” said Twitter and Jelly co-founder Biz Stone in a 2014 talk, before going on to make an astute prediction: “In the future, companies aren’t going to spend five million pounds on advertising. They’re going to give away four and spend the other one telling everyone how they gave away four million pounds to good causes.”
No one knows this better than the giants of the tech world.
On Father’s Day in 2016, Google showed how its context-based search engine could help a father and his son bond by recreating scenes from popular Bollywood films. That it was actually an ad was effectively washed over by the emotional hook.
Now, a new ad for Google’s Android – aimed at attracting coders – channels noble intentions to promote its Code It Possible programme, under which anyone can learn the basics of the operating system. The advertisement features Natarajan R and his wife Krupa M, who create an app that helps children with development problems to communicate their basic needs.
“You don’t have to change the entire world,” Natarajan declares after creating his app. “You just have to look at what I can do for my kids here.” With a message like that, who can ignore the value of signing up to learn Android coding?