By all accounts, Google’s launch of the Chrome browser has been a tremendous success. Not since the launch of the iPhone has a product generated this much buzz in the industry.

Google has taken an interesting approach to marketing Chrome. It commissioned Scott McCloud to create a comic book explaining the benefits of Chrome, an industry first as far as I know. The comic book itself turned out to be newsworthy, and the few physical copies that were produced are now much in demand.

Another interesting aspect of the Chrome marketing campaign is that much of the message content is very technical. The comic book and the promotional video go deep into the innards of the browser and explain the rationale behind the technical choices made in the design of Chrome. The video features the actual engineers who worked on the browser. This begs the question: Is Chrome targeted at developers or consumers?

Chrome’s marketing is an example of three important lessons in technical marketing:

• Stand out. When companies do something unusual, they give the media stories to write. It is no surprise that Google’s comic book generated so much attention. The book also delivered the message in the form of a story, making it more understandable and memorable
• Be open and honest. Open and honest messages that show personality resonate better than polished, bland messages. We are, after all, marketing to humans who respond to emotions. Putting engineers in front of the camera ensured that the message came through unfiltered.

• Adjust your marketing to the product. What works well in marketing one product can be a disaster for another. The purpose of Chrome is to serve as a platform for application developers. Hence, Google came out with highly technical marketing that appealed to engineers. And the rest of the world went along for the ride.

Kudos to Google for a job well done.

- Girish Wadhwani

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