The Return of ‘Google U’

Back in late 2002 my former colleague Neal Polachek (of The Kelsey Group) and I attended a “Google U” at the W Hotel in San Francisco. That night was really the gensis of the Interactive Local Media program, which I ran until I left earlier this year.

The purpose of that 2002 seminar was to introduce Google AdWords to new and neophyte online advertisers. After a brief introduction the participants (mostly small business owners and marketing people) were divided into two groups: those that had existing campaigns and wanted to learn how to optimize those campaigns and those who hadn’t tried Google AdWords but were interested.

I just got an email (as an AdWords advertiser) notifying me of some upcoming AdWords seminars around the country. Note that it costs money now to attend:

Each day-long seminar is divided into two 4-hour sessions. For each seminar, you may choose to attend the full day, or the afternoon session only.

Full day – $249
Afternoon session only – $149

Here’s the marketing copy from the email:

If you’ve ever thought that “everyone seems to get great results using search marketing but me,” we urge you to attend AdWords Seminars for Success. This seminar is not a sales pitch — nobody will be selling you anything. The focus is on improving your AdWords skills and increasing the immediate impact and success of your ads.

Since this was sent, presumably, to those who already have or had signed up for an AdWords account word of these seminars may not penetrate too deeply to those who don’t currently advertise on Google. But there will be some viral forwarding of the email and word of mouth. It may have been sent to anyone with a Google account (but then it would be spam and it’s unlikely that Google did that.)