We all know that Google have been putting some serious marketing muscle behind their newly launched social efforts but even I’m surprised to see them launching mainstream TV advert to promote the product to the masses. The irony will not be lost on many that Google are turning towards old media to promote their cutting edge new social network. This couldn’t be more different to the likes of Twitter and Facebook who grew organically within the student and tech communities respectively.

Google had shunned TV advertising for nearly a decade, but have recently turned to it as a medium to get the message out about its Android and Chrome operating systems and browsers. They have so much riding on this social project, and if it does ultimately fail, it won’t be down to the amount of effort being expended getting it in front of people. It now appears on all Andriod devices when you launch the system, on the homepage of Google itself at times and on a huge range of other Google products including Youtube.

The thing with this is you can’t force people to join a social network and Google are showing how little they understand the place with these ads. The one thing it also shows is that they have money to burn because there is zero revenue coming out of Google+ at the moment, and most companies could never afford the luxury of running TV campaigns to get new users. What do you think? Genius marketing by Google or money down the drain?

Niall Harbison