Google Announces Unique Celebrity Partnership

Continuing their increased usage of traditional advertising methods, tech giant Google as just announced that they will be partnering with Weird Al Yankovic to represent the company as a celebrity spokesperson (according to this recent news story). The partnership on the surface seems obscure. However, with a spokesperson like Yankovic, it makes perfect sense. “The status level of Weird Al represents a name that almost everyone recognizes but few give more than a second thought to,” a Google spokesperson stated in this interivew. “With the rise of B-List celebrity shows like ‘Dancing with the Stars’ and ‘Fox News,’ this type of mediocre star power will help us better identify with the public.”

Most of us wouldn’t immediately associate Google with someone like Yankovic but the two have a lot in common. Both names have championed capitalizing on taking ideas that aren’t their own creation and presenting them as original products. For example, Weird Al as taken original rap songs such as “Gangster’s Paradise” and “Ridin’ Dirty,” and sold numerous albums for his own spin on those songs like “Amish Paradise” and “White and Nerdy,” putting enough of his own personal spin to make both re-makes his own original product.

In the same way, Google took an original idea of sharing content like Twitter and formed their own ‘innovative’ product called Google Buzz. Most recently, Google has jumped on the popularity of Facebook Likes to introduce their new +1 button into search, where users can vote for links they like.

When establishing celebrity spokesperson decisions for a company, it’s best to find someone who most closely identifies with your brand. While Google is a much bigger household name than Weird Al Yankovic, their processes of developing new products run strangely parallel to each other on occasion. It will be interesting to see how this partnership pans out.

What do you all think? Is this a smart move by Google?

If you stuck around to read this far, you will be thrilled to know that this is an April Fool’s post. I actually have a lot of respect for Google’s mobile tech. Some of these thoughts were inspired by this parody of when Google threatens to kill its users.  I just realize this post probably won’t get indexed…