Right on top of my Gmail this morning: a red link, indicating something new: ‘Watch our video’.
The Gmail asked US a promotion video for THEM, and WE did it. Ended up pretty neat, I must admit, as it was a pretty neat idea to begin with.
A simple one, as all good Google ideas are. All we had to do was to print out a PDF of the red Gmail envelope showing the ‘M’, and then record a ten second clip of a funny, cool, hilarious or creative way in which this envelope was passed from the left to right. That was all folks, and after we uploaded the result to YouTube, all we had to is wait if we were in. (We’re not, cause we forgot about the deadline 🙁
But why did we have to pass from left to right?
According to the Gmail blog: you can see this as a symbol of how email connects people from all over, making the world feel a bit smaller. Or as a metaphor for mail exchange servers, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), and all of the technical steps involved in getting a Gmail message around the world from one inbox to another.
The Google Team: We asked you to help us imagine how an email message travels around the world. All it took was a video camera, the Gmail M-velope ( ), and some creativity — and, wow, did you get creative!
The clips you submitted were amazing and it was hard to choose selections for the final video featured here. You can check out all of the submissions we received on YouTube, and read more about it on the Official Gmail Blog.
Enjoy!