Kudos to Doodle 4 Google

One of my favorite examples of Internet marketing is "Doodle 4 Google". This fun Google campaign gets points for keeping their brand image naturally fresh by giving away brand ownership to the consumer and supporting the great cause of education and the creative self expression of children.

Doodles are known as the decorative changes that are made to the Google logo to celebrate holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of famous artists and scientists. Whether it is the beginning of Spring, Albert Einstein's birthday, or the 50th anniversary of understanding DNA, doodles on the Google homepage have made searching on Google more fun and enjoyable for its users worldwide. Many users excitedly anticipate the release of each new doodle and collect them!

This year Google is inviting U.S. kids to exercise their creative imaginations around the theme, "What I’d like to do someday…" One lucky student artist will take home a $15,000 college scholarship and $25,000 technology grant for their school. The judges for this years contest include actress Whoopi Goldberg and Jim Davis, Creator, "Garfield" Comic Strip. This year’s contest partners are the Whitney Museum of American Art, Boys & Girls Clubs of America and Girl Scouts of the USA.

As Google puts it, "Having a little bit of fun with the corporate logo by redesigning it from time to time is unheard of at many companies but at Google, it is a part of the brand. While the doodle is primarily a fun way for the company to recognize events and notable people, it also illustrates the creative and innovative personality of the company itself."

A Well-Integrated Experience

As a bit of current affairs nut, I spend quite a bit of time surfing around for news. I like getting my news both from websites as well as Twitter. As is well documented, the media tends to put its spin on each story based on its agenda. As such, I find it kind of amusing as well as informative, to surf around the different media outlets to see what their headlines and messaging look like when it comes to a big story. Taking the recent news that came out of Egypt…I spent time on CNN, Foxnews, Al-Jazeera, Haaretz.com, The Economist, Huffington Post, trying to gather as much information as possible so that I could make my own conclusions. This included reading blogs on the sites (where available) as well as reading comments left with the stories.

This pattern of mine, which I’m sure plenty of others follow, has exposed me to the web presence of the media industry. It has allowed me to make my conclusion around which companies have well-integrated web + social media platforms, and which companies do not. The ones that do will continue to prosper and get ahead of their competitors, while those that do not, need to improve in this space or face falling further behind.

Turning our attention to the scope of this blog: “Blog about a good example of Internet marketing either through a website, blog, Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter and include a link” I think that to answer this as it pertains to the media industry, one needs to first answer the following questions (I’m using company to refer to the website, etc.):

• Which company has the most well-integrated platform?
• Which company is most active in the use of social media?
• Which company has the most active followers?
• Which company seeks out and use its followers content?

With the above questions answered (at least in my mind) it’s time to determine how to measure “good Internet marketing” when it comes to a web media outlet. The two metrics that are top of mind are: Size of active audience and ability to “market” your message. Based on this criteria, for me the winner is CNN. Whether I’m on cnn.com, or m.cnn.com, or Twitter – the look and feel as well as the message is integrated. What I think ultimately sets CNN apart is its push for their audience’s input – be it blogs, be it pictures, tweets from where news is breaking. Especially powerful is CNN’s iReport, a Blogging site who’s content comes directly from people like you and I: http://ireport.cnn.com/