JitterJam – Integrated Social Marketing Software for Business

Google, well-known for releasing special versions of its iconic logo to commemorate holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of luminaries, this morning released its most interactive “doodle” to date: a fully playable version of the 1980s video game Pac-Man, with the Google logo for a backdrop. The release, which coincides with the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man’s debut, is currently dominating Twitter’s trending topics.

Celebrating holidays, birthdays, and historic events with your customers—particularly those events most relevant to your business or market—is an excellent way to demonstrate knowledge and appreciation of culture, history, and the bigger picture. But there is another benefit. On their site, Google admits that, “[w]hile the doodle is primarily a fun way for the company to recognize events and notable people, it also illustrates the creative and innovative personality of the company itself.”

So, how might your business illustrate creativity and innovation in this way? What about a custom homepage or Twitter background? Depending on the design of your Website, you could add an occasion-specific splash page or a banner image. And don’t forget about offline opportunities! A subtle change in packaging for a special celebration or event can build consumer interest and online buzz as well. Make some aspect of your product or brand collectible, and collect it your advocates will. Google reports that some of their users actually collect their custom logos!

And if you’re running out of ideas, get your customers involved! Google invites customers to submit their own ideas for logos, and has even run a contest for K-12 students to bring in new ideas. The Jones Soda company invites its customers to submit photographs to be used on the company’s bottled beverages.

There are, of course, some things to be cautious about. As Google points out in answering the question of why they don’t release doodles for certain holidays, “We have to balance [the doodle calendar] with the need to maintain the consistency of the Google homepage.” So, brand consistency is an issue to consider. Another issue is the potential to be offensive. Events or occasions that are obviously somber should be avoided, as should any that might be misinterpreted by your customers or prospects.

But, those caveats aside, why not give an idea like Google’s doodles a try? Have you already? Let us know in the comments, and then get outside and have yourself and amazingly fun Fun Stuff Friday.

“[W]hen you give engineers the chance to apply their passion to their company, they can do amazing things.”

That quote comes to us from Google software engineer Bharat Mediratta (in a 2007 interview with Julie Bick of The New York Times), and Google has certainly proved the statement accurate. Google’s 20% time policy encourages employees to spend 20% of their time working on projects that they’re passionate about but which don’t necessarily fit into their job descriptions. And the projects that have resulted from this (to one extent or another) include big name products such as Gmail, Google News, and Google Reader.

This is nothing new, of course. As Scott Berkun points out in this 2008 article, 3M’s 15% time rule in the 1950s helped usher into existence both masking tape and Post-It notes.

As you can imagine, this is a much-beloved perk of working for Google (big enough that it appears on Google’s Jobs page). And companies big and small could benefit from some version of it. Lifehacker has some tips, as does Google developer Joe Beda.

Ever produced anything awesome in your spare time at work? Are you encouraging your employees to follow their passions on the job (within reason, of course)? Leave a note in the comments below, and let us know.

Then get out there and have yourself a fantastic Fun Stuff Friday!