• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, June 22, 2011

That's what chairman Eric Schmidt just explained to the Cannes Lions attendees. He did so at the prompting of Google brand chief Andy Berndt, who was then at BBH, the agency that created Google's Super Bowl spot.

"And hell has frozen over," Schmidt said when he was presented with the concept, because Google had resisted the idea of brand advertising in lieu of practicing what it preaches: performance-based marketing.

But that's not the end of the story. Schmidt said even after he and Sergei Brin and Larry Page signed off on it, they needed to get the Google board to approve it. Turns out, they loved the spots produced for the Super Bowl and also green-lighted it.

But being Google, they went one more step, and pre-tested the popularity of three commercials produced for the campaign by running it on YouTube, and selecting the spot that generated the most views and best comments.

"The question was, was it a good investment," Schmidt recalled the Google insiders saying. But after analyzing the incremental search generated by the spot, Schmidt said Google's analysts determined it "paid for itself."

"At the end of the day we took something like the super bowl ad and turned it into an ROI phenomenon," Schmidt explained.

"And people liked it," Berndt added, showing his creative stripes.