Have any firms had a greater impact on the digital era than Google and Facebook? It’s doubtful that you’re reading this post without interacting with their products, for better or ill. Based in Menlo Park, Google has so thoroughly won the search engine war since its founding in 1998 that it has become a verb. It now has so many wings that the first result on Google for “google wings” was a drone delivery startup called Wing, owned by Google parent Alphabet.
Google Chrome, Gmail, YouTube, and Google Pixel are only four of the company’s dozens of forays, many of which have failed. Of course, one could argue that Google hasn’t always followed through on its primary ethos of “don’t be evil.” However, it has rarely attempted a moonshot and failed (“moonshot” is Google’s word for its most ambitious endeavours).
Facebook, created in 2004, may be a relative newcomer here. Few would argue that it has had a lesser impact on society than its neighbour. The website, whose parent company was renamed Meta last year, now has nearly three billion members from every country. Rather than following Google’s in-out strategy, Facebook has invested in other social media platforms, the most prominent of which being WhatsApp and Instagram.
Facebook has been chastised for political meddling, hate speech, and other antitrust violations. Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s founder, has now set his sights on a completely new goal: Web3. The pursuit of wearables and the “metaverse” by Facebook has both confused and intrigued people. Consider how both companies promote their most recent romantic idea.
Innovation
Google is a firm that thrives on innovation, whether it’s augmented reality glasses, self-driving vehicles, or spaceships. Unsurprisingly, it decides to express this through its own YouTube channel, which has billions of views. Its Year in Search, an emotional recap of the year’s events, has become an Internet staple.
For example, maps, Books, and Earth feel like digital updates to the Library of Alexandria and Marco Polo’s mapping. However, employing sites like Media Labs as gigantic white papers may be the company’s most significant marketing idea. They provide free lessons, statistics, and features to digital marketers. As a result, Google can function as a father figure online, directing people to pay-to-play services.
Since its inception in 2004, Facebook has focused on tweaking and bolting new features onto its core social media platform. As a result, its branding has remained relatively unchanged. Acquisitions of platforms such as WhatsApp and Instagram are less inventive than attempts to control the social media business by devouring competitors. This is reflected in its marketing. Not Wasting My Twenties, a YouTube campaign launched by Portland firm Wieden+Kennedy in September, received only 42,000 views. A Google Maps collaboration with the Navajo Nation has nearly 900,000 users.
Google is the winner.
Entertainment
YouTube’s content is a never-ending stream of fascinating material. Its dramatic 2019 campaign, 100 Billion Words, which aired during The Big Game, managed to inject true passion into a translation programme. It does quirky well with ads like 2010’s Speed Test, which matched Chrome against a potato fitted into a bizarre Rube Goldberg Machine.
Mark Zuckerberg frequently places himself in the centre of Facebook’s promotions, a la Steve Jobs. However, the company’s ambitious metaverse shift in October has spurred it to be more inventive. This year’s Super Bowl featured a weird ad in which an artificial dog was placed in a garbage compactor before being rescued by a Quest 2 user. It’s too short for this competition, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Google is the winner.
Social Awareness
It would be insane for Facebook, the world’s most popular social networking platform, to be socially inept. It’s evident from the company’s official Instagram and WhatsApp accounts that it knows exactly who its subscribers are.
With almost 100 transactions in 2016, Facebook Live courted celebrity hook-ups. Since then, it has concentrated on user-driven initiatives, attracting influencers and others from the shadows.
WhatsApp’s recent partnerships with NBA player Giannis Antetokounmpo of Nigeria and Lagosian fashion business Post Imperial demonstrate the company’s focus on users in Africa and other low-income areas. Instagram’s IG account is a whistlestop world tour of influencers from Korea to Kuwait.
Although Google’s Google+ site was shut down in 2019, the company’s social media presence hasn’t lessened. Google Arts and Culture include various games, quizzes, essays, and celebrity ads, including one that is broadcast on Instagram and other platforms featuring actresses Gal Gadot, Dwayne Johnson, and Ryan Reynolds.
FINALIST: Facebook
Consistency
Despite its latest Web3 intentions, Facebook may be the Silicon Valley king of constancy. Since the platform was a hastily-created academic spin-off, its famous cobalt-and-white logo has seldom changed. There isn’t a single person on the planet who hasn’t heard of Facebook. That may not be all that good, given that its user base fell for the first time last year.
Google’s red, yellow, green, and blue logos have remained iconic despite numerous revisions, spin-offs, and widgets. The firm’s motto “don’t be wicked” may be a low moral standard. Thus it was relegated to the back of its code of conduct. However, it conceals a powerful message about the company’s marketing as a benign force that operates in the background with a low marketing voice. Consider the Google Doodle; think with Google’s moderate editorial and other open-source portals aimed at professionals.
All of this is fantastic. However, Facebook barely wins this round for consistency without sacrificing a smidgeon of brand awareness.
FINALIST: Facebook
Impact
Facebook’s impact as a firm is apparent (and not always positive: some claim that the site has directed or improved coups, corruption, and violence from Myanmar to Mexico). However, as a marketing machine, the corporation relies too heavily on its founder’s omniscient image, and its video and celebrity ads can be uninspiring. As a result of its bet on the metaverse, the company should pursue a more daring marketing strategy. Expect increased off-piste use of influencers and brand ambassadors from underdeveloped countries as sites like TikTok challenge their main business.
Google has demonstrated that it is the more innovative and accomplished marketer. The corporation continuously looks ahead and establishes a futurist brand image, from Google Doodles to moonshots and sponsorship of science competitions. With hundreds of successful and imaginative video commercials, this contest can only have one winner.
Google is the winner.
Google wins, 3-2.
Google and Facebook have irrevocably impacted our world but in very different ways. We prefer Google’s calm confidence, backed up with true communication innovation, to Facebook’s shouty but frequently confusing language when it comes to marketing. Facebook appears to be selling to social media stats, but Google’s cutting-edge technology appeals to a broader sense of awe.