“How to not forget,” is typed into a Google search bar.
That’s the simple way that Google started its Super Bowl ad, which featured an elderly man’s voice as he asked Google Assistant to help him remember details about his late wife.
The narrator laughs as the ad goes on to show a photo of a younger, moustachioed version of himself with “Loretta.”
“Remember, Loretta hated my moustache,” he says in a way that makes the viewer think that the man is sitting around with his friends or family, sweetly reminiscing.
But while you or I may be moved by the idea that Loretta hated his facial hair, we know that it’s not romance that’s moving the conveyor belt in this nostalgia factory. In spite of the sentimental fog in which the tender musical soundtrack tries to swaddle us, we know that Google Assistants’ algorithms aren’t murmuring in sympathy. Rather, they’re churning away, recognizing that “Remember” voice command so that it can add keywords to its repertoire and thereby wind the marketing behemoth’s tentacles around us ever more firmly.
The marketing pitch worked. Emotions were evoked. Viewers’s heartstrings were plucked.
Damn you, Google.
Nobody wants to cry during #SuperBowl commercials. 😢😢
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BrooklynDad_Defiant! (@mmpadellan) February 03, 2021
yeah that google ad had no business making me cry while i’m trying to watch the game
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davis. (@hitchariide) February 03, 2021
Google’s Super Bowl spot featured no celebrities. Like its previous commercials, this one was inspired by real people. In 2009, that meant an American finding love in Paris. Thanks, Google and all your products, for telling him the difference between truffles and Truffaut and advising about long-distance relationships and finding jobs in Paris.
Similarly, the narrator’s voice in Sunday’s ad was that of a Google employee’s 85-year-old grandfather.
Last week, Google’s chief marketing officer, Lorraine Twohill, wrote in a blog post that Google’s goal is to “build products that help people in their daily lives, in both big and small ways.”
Sometimes that’s finding a location, sometimes it’s playing a favorite movie, and sometimes it’s using the Google Assistant to remember meaningful details.