The recently popular campaign to prevent gay teen suicide, “It Gets Better” has been used in a new TV ad promoting the Google Chrome Browser.
This is the first nationally broadcast television ad for the Chrome browser. It is a 91-second ad and was aired during the popular US television series, Glee.
Reddit, Facebook, Twitter and Digg users have been sharing the video widely since its release just 3 days ago, generating almost half a million views on YouTube and a lot of discussion for and against it.
This isn’t the first time that Google has shown a definite pro-gay bias. They were pretty vocal about their stance on gay marriage too, when Proposition 8 was up for debate in California. However, this is the first time such a large corporation has launched a major product ad campaign on the back of a strong pro-gay and pro-equality stance.
Everyone from the President of the U.S.A, Barack Obama, to Lady Gaga, to regular gay and heterosexual users have posted messages supporting the campaign and voicing their solidarity with the gay community. A similar campaign in the U.K, called “It Gets Better Today”, featured Prime Minister David Cameron and the Home Secretary, Theresa May.
Well known writer and columnist, Dan Savage, who used to play agony uncle to gays through his column ‘Savage Love’ had first started this campaign. He used it as a means to encourage teenagers that life does indeed get better, by referring to his personal experiences with his partner, Terry. His original video has been viewed well over a million times.
He had said then, “When a gay teenager commits suicide, it’s because he can’t picture a life for himself that’s filled with joy and family and pleasure and is worth sticking around for. So I felt it was really important that, as gay adults, we show them that our lives are good and happy and healthy and that there’s a life worth sticking around for after high school.”
This campaign is especially thoughtful as it seeks to help youngsters who need to come to terms with their so called “different” preferences, and deal with their family friends and colleagues who may have a lot of prejudices towards them and can end up hurting or being mean to them at a very delicate phase of their lives.
At the same time, this ad will help Chrome to compete with its competitors, Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, which currently have a much larger market share than Chrome.
