The Campaign

Non-digital Branded Entertainment is big in Indonesia, the first market Google Chrome is being launched in Asia. People are receptive of efforts surrounding Branded Entertainment. Howevre, what we're doing here is taking it one step further - bringing Branded Entertainment to the digital platform, and latching onto the cultural affinity the traditional Ramayana story has with the Indonesian people. Ramayana is part of their everyday life, and by building on that emotional connection to re-tell the story of Ramayana using Google Chrome, we weave in relevant, familiar content as Branded Entertainment for the people.

Results

THE CHALLENGE: Google wanted to take on the giants and launch the Chrome browser in Asia. People in Asia are familiar with browsers like IE, Safari, Firefox, but are new to what Chrome can do. Google's ambition was to display the endless possibilities the web can bring through Chrome. Leveraging on the thought that 'Chrome is not your traditional browser', the challenge here was that Google didn't want to tell people, they wanted to show people that Chrome is not just different, it's better, in the way Google search is. They wanted to tell stories through technology, not about technology. THE OBJECTIVES: 1. To show instead of tell people that Chrome is better than your traditional browser. 2. To tell stories through technology, not about technology, in such a way that people feel an emotional connection to Chrome capabilities. The Ramayana Chrome Experiment fulfills both criteria. The familiarity and popularity of Ramayana as an age-old story passed down through the generations is an also advantage - it tugs at the heartstrings of our audience and piques people's curiosity of what we've done to re-tell the story with technology. THE STRATEGY & EXECUTION: To demonstrate that Chrome is not your traditional browser, we decided to show Chrome's cutting edge capabilities through the use of a traditional story that resonates with Asian hearts: the epic tale of Ramayana. Ramayana as a story has been told in various forms through the ages in Asia. We re-told this familiar & popular ancient epic through an interactive Chrome Experiment, integrating Chrome features and Google services like Chat, Products, Weather and Maps. The interactive experience also incorporated WebGL and showed off the benefits of HTML5, letting users experience that Chrome is capable of more than speed – it’s also powerful in security and stability.

To demonstrate that Chrome is not your traditional browser, we decided to show Chrome's cutting edge capabilities through the use of a traditional story that resonates with Asian hearts: the epic tale of Ramayana. Ramayana as a story has been told in various forms through the ages in Asia. We re-told this familiar & popular ancient epic through an interactive Chrome Experiment, integrating Chrome features and Google services like Chat, Products, Weather and Maps. The interactive experience incorporated WebGL and HTML5 to show that Chrome is capable of more than just speed – it’s also powerful in security and stability.

When we revealed the interactive story to Asia, the crowd went wild. Opening with about 170,000 visits in the first 2 weeks, with various mentions from local blogs and news articles. The experience went on to make waves in the rest of the world, even picking up a FWA Site of the Month ribbon along the way, making Chrome a legend.