Thanks to a smart piece by Jeff Rum in Social Media Today – 3 Steps to Effective Brand Storytelling Using Emotions – I discovered a Google video that I had missed. It’s called Reunion, and it was produced for the Indian market. It was published on YouTube on November 13, 2013 and immediately went viral, reaching 1.6 million views before debuting on television on November 15, 2013. As of today, the ad has earned more than 13 million views on YouTube.
As Jeff rightly says, Google could easily communicate with lists of facts and statistics (the vast number of people who use their search engine), but they don’t: “Instead, they run ads like this video, which cleverly tells an emotional story that hinges on the use of Google. Instead of being told about the product, we are seeing it in action”.
Not all Google ads are similarly effective, yet this one is enough to tell that Google, indeed, understands emotional storytelling. The story is simple. Baldev is an old Hindu man in Delhi, India, and Yusuf is an old Muslim man in Lahore, Pakistan. One day Baldev shows his granddaughter Suman a dated photo of two children: it portrays him and his best friend Yusuf when they lived in Lahore before the Partition of India in 1947.
Each evening – Baldev tells Suman – he and Yusuf would fly kites in a park in front of his house and “steal” jhajariyas from Yusuf’s family sweet shop. When Partition came, however, Baldev and his family had to flee India overnight.
Many decades later, Baldev still remembers Yusuf and misses him. Suman decides to act. Using her laptop and Google to check details of her grandfather’s story, the girl is able to find Yusuf’s sweet shop in Lahore. She calls his grandson Ali, who helps plan a surprise visit from Yusuf on Baldev’s birthday. Baldev opens the door in astonishment: the scene of the reunion of the two elderly men is very touching.
This story is fictional but the acting is excellent and feels authentic. As in the best movies, it starts from that specific emotional state in which the main character is lacking something. As Christopher Vogler explains in The Writer’s Journey (Michael Wiese Productions, 1998), those missing elements help create sympathy for any story heroes: the stronger their lack and the ordeal they go through, the more intense the audience’s emotions when they reach their completeness. The old Baldev is able to move us because we feel his lifelong nostalgic affection for his little friend Yusuf.
In this emotional development no word is spent on Google services, but they are inserted in the narrative flow unobtrusively. In the 3 minute video sequence Suman and Ali most naturally use Google to: a) check where the park in which Baldev and Yusuf used to play is located; b) explore what kind of sweets the children loved to eat; c) find Yusuf’s sweet shop in Lahore; d) verify the Indian visa requirements; e) check the weather in Delhi; f) know when the plane carrying Yusuf is going to land. All these little gestures appear natural and credible as we all use Google in a very similar way in our daily lives.
Thus, this video shows that Google has the right approach to emotional storytelling; and it also proves that the company is able to offer branded content of entertaining value, limiting the part of the brand and its services to an ancillary role. A fine way to appeal to its users in the age of the web.