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Google Thinks Too Small With World's Biggest Billboard

This article is more than 9 years old.

Last week I posted, "Clear Channel Unveils Largest Digital Billboard In The World - Now What?"  I suggest that the idea for such a space needs to be as big as the space. This week  Google  launched the first creative idea in the largest billboard in the world. Let's just say the billboard is much bigger than the idea.

Here's a video clip that captures Google's use of the space pretty well, and in action:

The limits of the interactivity push the creative back to the 1980s.

I give Google credit for taking on the ambitious challenge of creating interactivity with such an enormous and high profile billboard. Passersby can hit the podium in front of the screen and play rudimentary games against each other.

But that's also the problem. The games are so rudimentary - e.g. counting the number of times you can bounce a ball on your avatar's head - that I am brought back to the Atari system I had when I was ten years old. Hardly the experience a high-technology brand like Google, particularly in the form of its Android platform, should want to be associated with.

Could be that the dumbing down of the games is due to the limitations of the technology on such a grand scale. But still, there's the Android brand spanning 25,000 square feet with animated avatars drawn with South Park sophistication inviting people to bounce a ball on their heads.

The message will get attention, but will it matter?

Because it's on the largest billboard in the world, the idea will get noticed. I noticed. And I have to say I am intrigued by the overarching idea presented in the creative, "Be together. Not the same." That line is paid off in the creative idea with the ability to create your own customized avatars to play these games.

The line is a thinly-veiled slap at Apple , the brand I guess you could say Android is positioning as, "Be disconnected. All the same."

Google could have done something wonderful with this giant board, armed with "Be together. Not the same." Particularly in New York City, where everyone is so packed together and so not the same. This space needed a big, anchoring, maybe emotional brand idea, not a graphically simplistic avatar maker.

It's not bad, it's just not great.

This idea is a nice idea. And the fact they are donating "time" on the billboard during their own buy to nonprofit communications should be noted and applauded.

But, as I said in my original post, this giant billboard is to billboards what the Super Bowl is to TV spots.

And to me this was just another billboard.

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