Don’t kill the Google feel
As many of you might already know, Google is going through a bit of a rough time in Europe, where it lost the right to use the Gmail brand. The reason: it’s been registered quite a few years back by a german venture capitalist using it as an abbreviation for Giersch mail. You can read the EU’s trademark agency ruling over here (heads up: it’s a .pdf). A similar situation is in place in the UK, where Google is also using Google Mail in stead of Gmail.
Company officials declare that the EU’s ruling is not applicable to countries in the EU other than Germany and Great Britain (source cnet news). Still, campaigns have been deployed to promote Google’s mail service in member and neighbouring countries (Romania respectively Russia; let me know if you know of more). I’m guessing disputes are in course or following in these regions as well.
The two campaigns’ most painful point of difference is the alignment with Google’s core values. See below the Russian approach and the Romanian approach.
Russia
The Russian campaign is based on the similarity of slang expressions for soap and email and is centered around Gmail’s strong spam filtering capabilities (’the cleanest soap” 
). Read more about this campaign on Futurelab’s blog here.
Romania
The Romanian campaign is a banner campaign :|…
I never saw Google as a banner brand and it actually makes me sad that such a brand would resort to such overworked promotional methods. Call me crazy, but I believe Google’s image is affected by the banner campaign, as this stands against everything Google stands for. A brand that revolutionized the web is way above traditional web advertising. I hold them to higher standards and I am disappointed to see them fail to meet them locally.
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