just another blog pressed for words

M.I.A.’s new album title, /\/\/\Y/\, has the interwebs ablaze around the relationship between creativity and Google visibility, lovingly referred to in the ad world as SEO. Essentially, Google only picks up on the letter Y from the album title, leading to results on Yahoo or Generation Y, and absolutely nothing on M.I.A. or the album itself (I even tried the quotation mark trick, to no avail).  Folks over at hipsterrunoff and PSFK are asking a lot of good questions:

Does being un-Googleable kill chances for success in the modern world?

Are artists + businesses “constrained’ by having to consider the googlability of their brand, or is the ’search engine’ a tool that has helped every1 access more information + opportunities for commerce than ever?

Or, as one commenter puts it,

Intentionally or not, M.I.A. is making an anti-Google statement and reaching new heights of counter-culture irony. Which may well come back to taunt her, forcing her to use the alternate name MAYA for Google/iTunes/etc. purposes (this was the case with Justice who had to give their album † the alternate name “cross” to have it show up on Google).

So what does this debate mean for advertisers? Is anti-Google the new underground? If a brand wants to support a sense of exclusivity and nurture an in-the-know audience, should they strive for this search-engine-invisibility? Or would that make things difficult for a genuinely interested audience? At the end of the day, does it all just seem like it’s trying a little too hard, and being a little too arrogant? (I’m speaking in general, and hoping that M.I.A.’s intentions were to be progressive, not abrasive).

Maybe what’s more interesting isn’t what this means for advertisers, but how the things that used to only matter for brands are permeating everyday life. It’s not just musicians thinking about the Google cred of their album, song, or stage names. With a generational shift towards cultivating personal brands and standing out from the mainstream, SEO is starting to matter for the average Joe and Jane. Or, should I say, Jayne. An article in the Wall Street Journal commented on the importance of Google — when naming your newborn child.  And that was in 2007.

So what I really wanna know is what hipster parent will be the first to legally name their kid in ASCII. Now that would be ironic.