A wonderful example of effective corporate storytelling

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This marketing video by Google has everything going for it: It’s beautifully filmed, it’s an inspiring and powerful bit of storytelling and it even contains a subtle but important underling message – that the human spirit transcends artificial political and cultural barriers.

In 1947, Britain partitioned India into two independent and sovereign countries – India and Pakistan. Between 10 and 20 million people were uprooted to be on the ‘right’ side of the new border and at least a million people died in the process. Since then, tension and conflict between the two countries has been constant.

Enter Google with their mission to make all of the world’s information available to everyone.

Sure, Google has a huge leg up on just about every other company on the planet: A virtually unlimited promotional budget that provides them the opportunity to hire the world’s smartest marketers AND a product that, by it’s very nature, lends itself to almost any narrative you can imagine, but those advantages are still no guarantee of success. (Just ask the folks at Microsoft.)

In just over three minutes Google delivers a beautiful corporate video that tells the story of two men divided by the partition and how their grandchildren use Google to help reunite them. The editing is wonderful, the cinematography simply stunning and the story itself packs a powerful emotional punch as the two men reunite in the last few frames of the video.

Already closing in on 10 million views and gaining a great deal of media attention Google has hit a home run with this latest promo.

This video is a brilliant example of great corporate storytelling. If Google continues to develop promotional marketing tools at this level they may just succeed in achieving both their altruistic goals and their business objectives.

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