This is a case of "steal with pride". Because when you've got assets you can work with from overseas in order to put more funds towards working media, you should. Simple as that.
Google needed to protect its share of Search. In particular on iOS mobile devices where not only was Safari the default app (for which Google pays to be the primary search provider) but Safari didn't have the same features you could find on Android devices. As a result, when it came to iOS users, Google search looked and felt 'old school' compared to its rivals getting all the press and who were starting to be used as a search tool: TikTok, ChatGPT and the like. With Australia being an iPhone market, that was a lot of consumer Search that could become vulnerable to competitors - that's a lot of revenue that could be at risk.
Search needed a reinvention and some of Google's latest releases like taking a picture to search where to find an item, hovering over another language to translate anything you see or simply humming a tune to find out what it was would do the trick.
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The hard part? To protect its share of search and reduce the royalties paid to Apple for searches made through Safari, these new features wouldn't be offered on via Safari. For Google to protect its turn, iOS users would need to download an entirely new Google app on their phone and be convinced to switch from their well entrenched Safari search habits.
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Two make this happen, Google would also attempt another first: a 100% digital campaign with no ATL spend whatsoever. This was a big departure for Google given the the target demographic would be skewed toward Gen Z given they were the most likely to be experimenting with the competition. This was a global problem Google was trying to solve and countries such as Canada and EMEA had already made a start creating bespoke assets.
Social Static
Given this was a test, albeit a large one, rather than create bespoke Australian assets at a high non-working dollar cost, we cherrypicked the best assets from other countries that we thought would best connect with Australian consumers. We then re-voiced them for Australia, reworked the copy, call to action and even the edits across two waves of creative optimising our learnings as we progressed. This wasn't just about picking up and plugging in, it was about optimising assets for Australia and creating consistency in our campaign. Across YouTube, BVOD, Snapchat, TikTok and Meta and short format video, statics and GIFs across 40 master assets, it was a mammoth effort.
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While Google doesn't share detailed results with the public, both awareness, downloads and Daily Active User KPI's are being met on par or above global averages.