Google: do our marketing for us

I’m obviously coming really late to this (don’t you hate that?) because some people have been blogging about it for about ten days and there have already been 422 video responses already, but better late than never…

Google have asked users to “imagine how an email message travels around the world” – you print out a PDF of the “Gmail M-velope” and film a ten second clip showing the envelope entering the clip on the left and exiting on the right. Then you upload it to a specific YouTube page. Google do the rest, patching it all together.

It’s an incredibly simple, genius idea. Google get the most incredible viral marketing, huge quantities of press, vast amounts of public interest. They use existing tools which people are familiar with already; outlay is next to nothing apart from the selection and patching.

What’s great about this is that you really, really want to do it….don’t you? It’s a lovely example of UGC done right. Here’s how you enter (closes 13th August).

Right, that’s my evening ruined, then…