“I have to teach my parents to use the Ola Cab App so I don’t have to drive them around all the time!”
“ The Practo app is so awesome – I can find all the doctors my Mom wants to visit”
“ I loaded Pacer on my Dad’s phone so he can keep track of how much he is walking”
“ My parents have started using the BigBasket app – I don’t need to lug their groceries any more”
“Oh does Skype work on phones too? Great let me download it so I can connect with the grandkids even when I’m out.”
These are real conversations I have heard. What I haven’t heard in a very long time is “I want to teach my parents how to use a laptop”. How to use a smartphone – yes, definitely. But laptop? That’s like so 2010. Or 1999 when I started using Google instead of Altavista. Now, folks search on Google when they don’t know which app to use for discovery. Or use Google to find the right app. Oh, dear.
So I don’t know why the folks at Google decided to build their new ad around a daughter deciding to spend time to teach her mother how to use a laptop. The whole ad reeks of artificiality (or a very narrow target audience). Who lives in that kind of a house these days? There are lots of attempts to make it a tear-jerker celebrating the mother-daughter relationship. Me, I don’t approve of sadvertising – I feel manipulated.
Given all the effort put into this ad, it is disappointing that Google doesn’t acknowledge the reality of its value proposition today. They do a lot of really cool stuff – it just doesn’t reflect in this senti ad that will garner lots of likes and little actual conversion.
Here’s the ad
#togetheronline
