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Cannes Lions: It is the story not the technology that makes a successful ‘Moonshot’, says Google’s Astro Teller

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By Jessica Davies, News Editor

June 18, 2013 | 2 min read

Technology advancement alone is not enough to create a ‘moonshot’, each must tell a compelling story to be classed a success, according to Astro Teller, director of Google’s secret lab Google X, which is home to initiatives including Google Glass and self-driving cars.

Speaking at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Teller said the aim of Google’s X Moonshots lab is to achieve seemingly impossible world-changing ideas via the use of technology, science and creativity.

“Storytelling is not the wrapping and the bow that goes around a change-the-world invention – it is the foundation around which the invention can be built,” he said.

One of Google X's projects is to create self-driving cars, but first it must tell the right story, which could be centred on the fact that this invention will help reduce the millions of car-related accidents and deaths in the world, according to Teller.

“It’s not the technology but the story that matters. The story you pick to tell when you make a moonshot changes everything about it,” he said.

“What if we said by creating self-driving cars we would give back to people 10 per cent of their waking lives – that’s also a good story. Or we could say we want to solve an urban transportation problem by putting less cars on the road. The story you pick is the moonshot almost more than the technology you work on.

"Every time a new technology is made it is always pointed at old problems in old ways - it’s not enough to make technology, you have to see what is for, and that moment is a creativity moment,” he added.

Teller called on agencies to think of a moonshot they can take to their clients, and also to embrace the possibility of failure, adding that without experimentation and testing “radical progress” is unachievable.

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