Google hardware event was full of pop-culture references and we loved it

Google hardware event started with an enjoyable conversation between Dinesh and Gilfoyle, two main characters from the Valley favourite sitcom, Silicon Valley.  Silicon Valley is a popular television show produced by HBO depicting lives of a group of coders running a startup called “pied piper.” The television show gained attention in the tech crowd after its debut in 2014 while depicting real life problems of the groundbreaking idea, finding investors, fundraising rounds, copyright lawsuits and first to market race. It counts Dick Costolo, former Twitter CEO, among its consultants.

Gilfoyle, played by Martin Starr and Dinesh, played by Kumail Nanjiani engage in a conversation about the excitement surrounding Google Keynote. Dinesh, waiting for the Google event to start on his PC, asks Gilfoyle if he is excited about the keynote, to which Gilfoyle says no. Because he already had beta access to devices that were going to be announced. It fades out with Dinesh looking back at his monitor and thats when the actual Google keynote started. It was an unconventional but nice way of using relatable characters to start things off. The company used “Default” soundtrack by ‘Django Django’ as the launch track online for Google Pixel as reported by Brooklyn Vegan. The company has used another song “Closer” by Lemaitre as the launch video during the event where they take a jibe at Apple’s removal of the headphone jack. The presenters also not only mentioned popular television shows like ‘Stranger Things’ and ‘Narcos’ Season 2 during the keynote, but also played clips from these shows.

The company tied with Last Week Tonight with John Oliver’s host and famous English comedian, John Oliver to promote the content streaming using Chromecast Ultra. During the demo for Daydream, the company demoed a game crafted in the world of Harry Potter based on the upcoming Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The demo changed your Google ‘Daydream View’ controller into a magic wand which pumped me with excitement about the platform and its capabilities. All these familiar faces from the internet, be it online video streaming on HBO or Netflix or YouTube helped Google gain some crucial brownie points in an otherwise lacklustre presentation. This conveyed to us that the company is targeting pop-culture topics such as TV shows to help potential consumers identify with their product. Apple, on the other hand, concentrates its efforts towards live music performances by popular artists. Recently during the iPhone 7 launch, the company called up Sia for a live performance to emphasise their tie-up with artists to promote them. Apple does not need to make any special effort to help their consumers identify with their products. Their marketing team has helped gather a larger fan following and brand loyalty towards the brand which makes them wait in lines across the stores to buy the announced Apple products. But it was good to see Google indulging in a bit of pop-culture for a change.