 Hey Google, what's up with your marketing this year? I don't know, but I know someone who does. Google this year has been pretty aggressive when it comes to marketing in ways that we haven't seen them be with voice in the past. TV and radio spots, digital displays, transit ads, and out of home can only do so much for a brand. To market Google's voice assistant, the digital giant has taken home on the road. This year, the Google Assistant marketing team has produced three major activations to give the public an opportunity to try home firsthand. In January in Las Vegas, Google created a giant vending machine that used voice commands to deliver a prize. In March, Google Assistant took over an entire house during South by Southwest in Austin. The goals to show attendees the interconnected house of the future. Highlights included a voice automated margarita maker and a litter box that self-cleaned on command. The latest activation was a voice activated indoor mini golf course in New York City, complete with windmills and ramps. But the real question is, what is Google getting from all of these activations? What I think they're doing is they're trying to show how Amazon is not the only company that has a voice assistant that can be useful to day-to-day life. Speakers such as the Amazon Echo, which a lot of people have, and so Google's trying to say, hey, you know, we've got something too to provide. I don't know if it's necessarily on-brand for Amazon to be as interactive when it comes to voice activations or creating certain things in public that are just pop-ups. Amazon in general tends to be a bit more stale, I guess you would say, at least with, you know, they're very e-commerce driven, but they're not necessarily, they don't have the same ethos as Google has had. So I don't know if that's part of it or maybe they just don't feel like they need to because they are so far ahead. I think the question is, as Google is rolling out all these experiences, can Amazon keep up?