Advertising Strategies in Brand Establishment* (A case study of Google Doodles)

Abstract
Every producer or service provider needs advertisement for production introduction and better selling. Therefore, attention to manufacturing and development of the brand is of special importance for the financial institutions in the international competitions. The improvement of brand value directly depends on advertising and brand identification. Therefore, Internet has become an important communicational tool that helps commercial brands to be publicized universally with fewer expenses. Any producer needs advertisement to introduce and sell its production and advertisement also needs media to transfer the message. Each media covers just a special range of users. Therefore, one kind of media is not emphasized in advertising, but the aim is to have attention to different media which are complementary to each other. Generally the media or advertising channels can be categorized into four groups: the press, broadcasting media, environmental advertisement and Internet. The press includes magazines, newspaper, etc. while broadcasting contains radio and television. Environmental advertisement also includes a wide range of indoor or outdoor advertising which is publicized to a large crowd of people. To introduce these strategies, Google is chosen as one of the most successful brands in the last decade so that its most important strategies that have contributed in brand establishment through proper logo design are analyzed. It was for the first time in 1998 that Google founders changed the logo of Google for participation in Burning Man Festival to inform the users of their absence and out-of-order service. The success of this strategy leaded Google to change its logo according to special ceremonies and searching becomes amusing and enjoyable for users. Nowadays, this process has popularized Google to the extent that some users collect the logos. To investigate the reasons of this success, 1421 Google Doodles from 1998 to 2012 are studied in this paper. The method of sampling was purposeful and non-accidental. The results showed that in place of using a stable advertising strategy, Google has applied a collection of diverse strategies to attract a wide range of users. The three principles of Google can be summarized as easy application and simplicity, user-oriented, and minimal approach. Repetition, improvement according to technology, balance between the text and picture, interactional relation, usage of varied concepts, attention to cultural and geographical diversity, benefiting from people’s fame in brand acceptance, unified advertising program, arising vivacity by the means of ironic approach and color attraction are of most important strategies used by Google. According to improvements in substructures, more accessibility and increase in number of Internet users, this virtual space can be less expensive, and more influential advertising ground in comparison to the traditional media. The case-study of the alteration in Google Doodles results in the priority of picture to the text to reach an understandable language, quick data transformation, technology aesthetics and visual attraction and diversity. By the means of minimal approach, simplifying and technology personification, Google has deleted its frightening aspect and by the collective intelligence and the policy of open doors, attracted more users and therefore gained more profits.