2010 marks the 10th anniversary of AdWords, and as a way of acknowledging each of their clients personally, Google headquarters in Mountain View, California and AKQA San Francisco put their heads together to come up with a unique way of saying thank you. The result, an idea for a personalised web film which is seemingly created especially for that advertiser.

AKQA approached PostPanic director Mischa Rozema, who took on the challenge, working closely also with London-based digital specialists Rehab who would carry out the customisation elements for each advertiser.

A film introduced by Senior Vice-President for Google AdWords Susan Wojcicki charting a series of ‘big experiments’ carried out by a fictional Google research department to say thank you to the AdWords clients. The advertiser’s name would be visually integrated into the various tests carried out by the extremely keen research department personnel. Unfortunately each highly ambitious experiment fails. As a conclusion to the film, Google decides the simplest ways are often the best and we’re treated to all the hundreds of Google staff worldwide shouting out ‘thank you’.

Behind the scenes, Mischa and PostPanic were asked to direct and produce the overall film, handing over at the end to Rehab who would add the technology to personalise each film with the advertisers name. Mischa’s idea was to create a stylised, imaginary research world populated with an extremely enthusiastic Head Research guy and his in-the-field, side kick. Filmed by PostPanic on location over 2 days at Google headquarters, San Jose Airport and surrounding countryside, the footage was then brought back to PostPanic’s home in Amsterdam for the post-production process.