About

Parisian Love Parodies, also known as "search stories", are a series of parody videos mimicking the format of Google's first television commercial "Parisian Love" which aired during Super Bowl XLIV.

Origin

On November 19th, 2009, the "Parisian Love" video was uploaded to Google's official Search Stories YouTube channel.^[1] The minute-long advertisement tells the story of a guy trying to find love in France by using Google to search for things like "How to find a job in Paris" and "How to impress a French girl." The video received over six million views in two years. The first parody was uploaded by YouTuber searchstory on December 2nd, 2009 and contained a search story about a surprise birthday party resulting in a heart attack.

Spread

On February 7, 2010, Google aired the commercial during Super Bowl XLIV, officially parting from their original policy of avoiding traditional marketing campaigns. The same day, the video reached the front page of the /r/entertainment^[7] subreddit and accumulated 420 up votes prior to being archived. On February 8th, Tech Crunch^[5] published a post about a parody video titled "Parisian Oops" by the New York Up Right Citizens Brigade team "The Brig."

On February 9th, the "Parisian Oops" video was posted to the viral content site BuzzFeed.^[8] The following day, Mashable^[6] posted a round-up of search story parodies. On April 13th, 2010, Google announced on their official blog^[3] that they had released a tool^[2] that allows users to create their own custom search story videos. The web culture blog Urlesque^[4] published an article claiming the "Search Stories creator has video meme potential" the day after the announcement.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

Search query volume for "parisian love" peaked in February of 2010, the same month the commercial aired during Super Bowl XLIV. Queries for "search stories" peaked several months later in April of 2010.

External References