Lots of great creative out there. But sometimes you see something so distinctive, so arresting that you have to stop and reflect. Great creative isn’t creative for creative’s sake, it works to tell a story about the product in a way that both highlights the features and positions that brand in a way that distinguishes it, even in a category that people don’t normally think much about.

And so it was with the recent video vignettes created by BBH on behalf of the Google Chrome browser. If you haven’t watched them, watch them now:

I know, right? Go ahead, watch them again.

Stunning. Again, for me transcends the merely clever. After watching these I didn’t just think, ‘Boy the folks at BBH sure are clever (though I did indeed think that).’ I thought: ‘Wow, I really want to try Google Chrome.” That’s really the only relevant and meaningful measuring stick of advertising isn’t it? Does it shift consumer thinking and behaviour. With this effort the answer is a resounding Mission Accomplished.

Ben Malbon, Managing Partner over at BBH Labs was kind enough to provide some insight on this ambitious project.

1. What was the inspiration for the Google Chrome campaign?

We took Google’s ingenuity & innovation as inspiration in developing the idea for these seven short films (& an intro). Everything was centered on demonstrating the benefits of Google Chrome as simply as possible.
The hero is the product. And so we celebrate how the product works, and the benefits it delivers, but in a “Googley” way. There’s a quirkiness to Google, a kind of geeky passion, that we also wanted to capture in how we brought this to life.

2. How did the ‘draw back the curtain’ / deconstructionist / tromp l’oeil / DIY creative concept come about?

Everyone’s tired of cliched technology ads. They don’t appear to be made for real people. What’s more, web browsers are hardly a high interest category; most people have no idea what they are, let alone how they work. (Ed. check out this video that Ben passed along that brings the issue into sharp relief)

We wanted a way of talking about a complex set of features and benefits that felt educational, but also delivered on entertainment and engagement.
We also wanted a creative way in that reflected the ingenuity and openness of Google. So we came up with the idea of handmade demonstrations.
Although we could clearly have cheated things visually in post-production, we wanted to create a feel of authenticity and hand-built. So every creation is built by hand and filmed in camera; no special effects are added. Even the music where the harpist is playing live on set.

3. The harp is inspired, how was that decision made?

The harpist was a last-minute decision but one that extends the handmade / ‘real’ feel that we were striving for in the films. For a start we wanted the music to feel part of not just the finished films, but the making of the films, the process itself. Secondly, we wanted something that was in many ways the opposite of the progressive techno that might more normally be the choice of backing music for a technology product launch.

When we found Jacqui (the harpist) we knew she’d do it brilliantly. She was on set with us for 3 whole days, which was highly unusual but very inspiring for the team. When we were doing the film with the mercury in it (Omnibox), everyone had to wear gasmasks on set; it certainly wasn’t something any of us had seen before, to see a harpist playing with a gasmask on.

4. It seems all the search engines (Yahoo!, Bing, Ask, Google) are trying to differentiate themselves right now, both in terms of offerings and brand. How do these web vignettes uniquely align with Google’s offerings (again, Chrome is a browser, not a search engine) and simultaneously distinguish it from the other search engines from a brand perspective?

Broswers are increasingly important in people’s lives because an increasing proportion of their lives are lived through them – social networking, news, finances, travel, photographs & film, entertainment. Google built Chrome, from scratch, because they believed that the user would benefit from a browser developed for today’s Internet. Many of the other browsers are evolved versions of browsers built for a very different Internet. For the geeks, there’s a great comic produced by Google that talks through what’s different and how they built it.

Here’s a behind the scenes video featuring Ben and the production crew:

A big thanks to Ben for his time. Production credit goes to: BBH New York, BBH London & the team at Glue London, who worked with the Google team on the development of the strategy, creative and media. The Director was Aaron Duffy and the production company were 1st Avenue Machine in New York. Here’s the BBH Labs post on this effort.