“Going Google” ads target Microsoft customers
By Dave Jeyes
After having recently announced the Chrome OS to compete with Windows, Google is already courting Microsoft customers. The campaign includes billboards that change daily and do-it-yourself flyers to post at the office.
The billboards, which are strategically placed in four major cities, will rotate through a different message for the entire month of August. The first few messages include witticisms like, “Just heard about going Google. I want to know more.” and “Ah. Just found out that going Google means switching to Google Apps.”
There’s a video on YouTube that lets you preview the billboards’ messages in case you don’t live near one. This is backed by an entire YouTube channel for Google Apps filled with testimonials and product tours.
Google’s campaign aims to get more companies using Google Apps instead of Microsoft Office and Outlook. The promotional site at www.google.com/appsatwork claims that there are already 1.75 million business customers using Google Apps.
The site includes case studies about businesses that have switched from Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes as their email solution. It also has a tool to calculate how much money businesses can save by letting Google manage their email servers.
Paired with flyers asking if we the company can, “Please, please, please. Can we go Google?”, this campaign could be viewed as an attack campaign on internal technology experts. However, it’s just as likely that the technologists are willing to try something new and the users and managers are afraid to change.
Either way, the campaign’s goal is to chip away at Microsoft’s control of the desktop and email software markets. It’s much like the laptop switchers ad campaign but directed at the lucrative enterprise market.
It will be interesting to see if Microsoft counters the ad campaign similarly to the laptop switchers war. That’s fine as long as Microsoft’s commercials aren’t as constant and annoying as the ones for Bing.
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