Google launches first major UK ad campaign

Google is launching its first major UK above-the-line advertising campaign, using the line "Gone Google". The ads, created by Google's inhouse creative hub in New York, broke on Monday morning across London locations and in newspapers and magazines and will run for a month.
Google's campaign, which will also run in markets including the US, France and Australia, supports its range of Google Apps products for businesses, such as Gmail and Google Docs, and will make use of digital displays at London stations including Paddington, Liverpool Street and Victoria while also running as a large projection on the Thames Valley University building at the intersection of the M4 and M5.

The campaign line refers to business users switching to Google's range of products and creative executions on digital screens will be updated daily to carry new copy.

Print ads will be carried in The Economist, The Daily Telegraph and trade titles targeting IT decision makers.

The campaign expansion comes just days before Microsoft, Google's nemesis, begins a massive marketing push to promote the 22 October launch of Windows 7.

Tom Oliveri, marketing director for Google's enterprise division, said that Google's enterprise marketing initiative began this summer and that Google always intended to take its enterprise message beyond the U.S.

Google launched the "Gone Google" in August in four U.S. cities - San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Boston - to promote its growing enterprise business and its efforts appear to have produced results.