Google woos commuters with billboard campaign

BANGALORE, INDIA: Search giant Google Inc. is all set to transform the marketing strategy for Google Apps, as the company is leasing prominent billboards in major U.S cities.

According to media reports, the new campaign is aimed at commuters in the major US cities such as New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Boston to promote a bundle of business applications that sells for $50 per worker annually.

A different message will be displayed each weekday through August, starting with Monday morning's commute. The messages will describe the frustration that motivates business users to become Google converts.

"The billboards tell the story of an anonymous IT manager who gets so fed up with the typical IT status quo that his company eventually - you guessed it - goes Google," explains Andy Berndt, managing director of Google Creative Lab, in a blog post.

For the last few months Google has steadily increased the campaign for Google Apps. The company claims that 1.75 million organizations are now using Google's online services for word processing and e-mail.

And the present campaign is seen as an effort to lure corporate customers away from Microsoft Corp.'s e-mail service and industry-leading applications for word processing, spreadsheets and scheduling.