Tell it to the whole world

“If the product is good enough, it shouldn’t need marketing”.

This theory troubles me. It is a quote from Douglas Edwards, ex-marketing executive and the 59th employee to be hired at Google. He worked there between 1999 and 2005, through the period of its greatest growth. The theory seems to me to be something that only people who are caught up in the midst of a media storm are able to spout.

The fascination with the dot-com boom had leading players celebrated as if they were sports stars – their companies competing like championship chasing teams. For every successful company that has followed this radical anti-marketing approach, I’d guess there were thousands that sank rapidly without a trace. Not that I can prove it, of course, as they failed to get their name and product out there, missing the opportunity to enter the dot-com world as a verb of their own.

Personally, I challenge that Google didn’t market themselves. Perhaps they originally avoided traditional means, but then the market they were operating in was at the time far from a traditional battleground. But today, Google have bitten the bullet and conceeded defeat, on this at least. The Google purchase YouTube, has had billboard ads for sometime. And now, most recently, has come the onslaught of their massive Google Chrome push. This is one of the most visable campaigns of the moment - even featuring in its own primetime tv commercial! Should all this marketing exposure in fact have the reverse affect on us then, and lead us to wonder whether it is ‘good enough’? I’m confused.

After having cashed in on his enviable cache of Google shares, Douglas Edwards is now cashing in on the experiences he had while working at the online search behemoth. His new book, I’m Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 has recently been released. Whether you agree with him or not, as the author of ubiquitous terms such as ‘AdWords’, Edwards has played an instrumental role in forging the voice of Google – one that we all know implicitly, whether we like it or not.