“Dear Hollie”…how an ad has got me blogging

I don’t normally pay a whole lot of attention to TV adverts; to be honest, I am a BBC girl at heart, so don’t usually have to contend with them. But I saw one recently that struck a massive chord – it was from Google, promoting their new Chrome browser.

It features a child called Hollie, and features actual footage taken by her family over her life so far. The premise is a father setting up an address to email his newborn daughter and then sending her messages over the course of her life. I nearly wept (as, from what I could see from my Facebook newsfeed, did a fair few of my friends)!!??

My daughter is now 20 months old. I bought one of those baby journal type things in my pregnancy ‘must-buy-everything-and-anything-baby-related’ phase.

I filled in a few pages relating to her first couple of months, so I can tell you the first song I sang her (“If You Were the Only Girl in the World”), the car she travelled home from hospital in (Honda CR-V), how much sleep we got in the first few weeks (very little) etc. All vital information, clearly.

Then it all dried up a bit. And I am seriously regretting it. I can’t clearly remember the things I want to – when did she first sit up on her own? When did she first give that infectious giggle? When did she start pulling the cat’s tail? (ok, not so bothered about that last one). I can only remember when she took her first steps because it was on New Year’s Day!!!!

Anyway, I set up an email address for her in May 2010, just before we held a party for her; I thought it would be nice for guests to RSVP directly to her. The account had lain dormant ever since……..until I saw this ad.

I have started to email my daughter.

Not on a daily basis, but it’s become a ‘notepad’ for all the things I don’t want to forget. And the things I want her to know when she’s old enough to log on and read them. So it might just be “you sang ‘twinkle twinkle little star’ on your own, and I nearly burst with pride”. She’ll probably groan and proclaim I am excruciatingly embarrassing at some point, but given time, I hope she’ll appreciate it, because I know I will.

So although advertising may not always do what you want it to directly (I’m still not using Google Chrome), it might still have an impact on your customers, and make them talk about you – as I say, my Facebook feed was buzzing about this ad after the first showing. And this, as we all know, is half the battle. You can see “Dear Hollie” here: http://www.youtube.com/googlechromeuk