Google?s Interactive Pac Man Logo vs Productivity

$120,483,800. That's the amount of productivity lost worldwide when Google celebrated PacMan's 30th birthday.

PacMan, for those born after its time, was a hit arcade game where you steer a little circle-shaped chomper through a maze and get it to eat all the dots, and some bonus fruits, without getting killed by the bad chompers. For some reason it was an extremely large hit and recently celebrated its 30th birthday.

Google, being expressive through its themed logos for as long as we remember, decided it would be a great idea if they actually made their logo interactive - and that's what they did. On the day of its launch, the average Googler stayed on the Google home page much longer than expected, and with a few numbers crunched by time-management company RescueTime, we find out what the damage to industry was. Here's what they found:

Cost was determined by:
4,819,352 hours of time spent on Google's home page that day
Average time spent on Google's home page that day 48 seconds
Versus the average amount of time spent on Google's home page on other days, which is 11 seconds
Multiplied by the number of visitors to the site that day, which was 503,703,000
Average wage of a Googler worldwide is $25/hr
What this means commercially:

Well, not much really, besides the fact that it teaches us all a lesson about viral online marketing. Have something that's a little bit out there online, and people will pay attention. Google doesn't really need any help with gaining market traction, however we have seen Google experience abnormally large spikes. The PacMan visitation was the highest influx to Google since Google released their Superbowl Ad (Parisian Love: http://ping.fm/hDndN <--- Goosebumps!).

It shows us that if you're willing to break the mould, think outside the square and engage users, your brand reputation will automatically increase, awareness will spread effortlessly, and you'll achieve a greater marketing result than you ever have whilst offline.

Google has reserved the page for you. Want to play? (don't tell the boss)tp://www.google.com/pacman/

Until Next Time,

Tomer Garzberg (Keynote Social Media Speaker)

http://ping.fm/ArljC