Title	GOOGLE YEAR IN SEARCH
Brand	GOOGLE
Product/Service	ONLINE FILM
Category	A09. Original Branded Digital or Social media
Entrant Company	R/GA LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM
Contributing Company	R/GA LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM

Name	Company	Position
Rodrigo Sobral	R/Ga London	Vp/Executive Creative Director
Remi Abayomi	R/Ga London	Group Account Director
Ricardo Amorim	R/Ga London	Creative Director
Paris Lawrence	R/Ga London	Associate Creative Director/Design
Emma Lightfoot	R/Ga London	Associate Creative Director/Copy
Lachlan Williams	R/Ga London	Senior Planner
Phil Hawksworth	R/Ga London	Technology Director
Jai Tedeschi	R/Ga London	Group Director/Production
Andy Shora/Dom Geargeoura	R/Ga London	Senior Open Standards Developer
Luke Wicker	R/Ga London	Copywriter
Wilf Eddings	R/Ga London	Designer
Clara Tudela/Muriel Bougherdani/Craig Jones	R/Ga London	Senior Visual Designer
Souad Setti/Ali Proctor-walsh/Nicola Spence	R/Ga London	Senior Producer
Paul Kennerly	R/Ga London	Creative Director/Film
Pete Brown	R/Ga London	Senior Copyrighter/Film
Alex Wills	R/Ga London	Executive Director/Content
Abdou Cisse/Akwasi Poku	R/Ga London	Junior Creatives

The Campaign

Google wanted to build a deeper connection with people at the end of the year, to move their relationship with their audience from functional to emotional. We set out to turn big data into an even bigger story, reinventing Google’s yearly review, and answering the question: what do our searches in 2014 say about us? Traditionally, these reviews are just a recap of the events that punctuated the year. We set out to do more than just remind people of the things that happened, we wanted to offer fresh insight and a new way of looking at the world. We built the Year in Search, starting with a thought-provoking film. Then we invited people to explore search stories in greater detail on our platform, in multiple languages, on any device. We first had to ensure the script was correct from a data perspective, utilizing the trend data and then we had to ensure that it had our unique creative positioning wrapped on top. This whole process had to happen in real-time and be 'circular' as many rights could not be secured and therefore back up and replacement footage, trends and whole stories swapped in and out. To make this happen, all 3 parties, in conjunction with our excellent edit and motion graphics team had to be in constant communication to ensure that we were synched throughout the production. Our stories exploded in culture with posts and tweets from fans and brands, and journalists used our data insights to inform their own reports. Within days, some of the biggest names got involved. It all came together on New Years Eve, with a monument to the year in Times Square, touching the hearts of millions of New Yorkers with data driven stories relevant to the city, day and time.

Our stories became a part of popular culture with over 30M views of the film, 10M site visits, 2.6B social impressions, coverage in every major media globally and participation from some of the most influential pop culture figures and brands including Justin Timberlake, Nicki Minaj, Game of Thrones, Miami Heat and Lego. We increased positive sentiment for Google by 26% during the campaign. We set out to offer a perspective of the year that only Google could tell, and we ended up creating a totally new storytelling platform. Our campaign delivered more impressions than the previous year’s campaign. Our social content performed higher on average than the previous year, and all of this happened on a smaller budget than the year before. We are confident that the performance of the creative hinges on the power of search data in telling an amazing and fresh story. In addition, the initial social listening we did to identify topics that resonated through the year definitely helped us deliver content that was relevant to popular culture.

At the end of every year, brands and media create hundreds of reviews, all telling the same story. Traditionally, these reviews are just a recap of the events that punctuated the year. We set out to do more than just remind people of the things that happened, we wanted to offer fresh insight and a new way of looking at the world. People have a particular relationship with search – they turn to it for anything and everything, and without self-editing. It’s a measure of natural curiosity and in some senses, the world’s biggest unofficial survey. This gave us the opportunity to tell a story that no one had ever seen before through the eyes of Google.