Google's brandmaster starts handing out clues
We've been told Andy Berndt left Madison Avenue ad agency Ogilvy & Mather for Google to help the company cut out the agencies and go straight for their clients. But maybe our Owen Thomas got it right, calling Berndt Google's new brander-in-chief. This YouTube ad for Gmail might be Google's most polished ad yet. It certainly beats Google's typical tone exemplified in a recent pitch for GOOG-411, Google's free phone-number directory line. "Hi my name is Brian, I'm a voice researcher here at Google. I'm here to tell you about GOOG-411. It's totally free and it's really easy to use." Andy, we beg you: Work on GOOG-411 next.