Unless you were asleep for the past 12 hours, you are well aware that Google+ opened things up for Brands today.  There is no shortage of articles and blog posts that covered this in depth today.  The best of them from an agency or brand consultancy standpoint are the following IMHO:

  1. TechCrunch: How Google+ Could One-Up Facebook Brand Pages
  2. Google Blog: Google+ Launches Brand Pages
  3. ReadWriteWeb: Google+ Launches Brand Pages
  4. Mashable: Google Direct Connect Hooks Search and Google+ Brand Pages Together
  5. TechCrunch: Google+ Launches Pages, Opens Floodgates for All
I am still poking around and “Circling” various brands to see who is jumping in and what they are doing, but I had to laugh a little at the brand page that Facebook quickly put up with a not-so-subtle jab with their pics.
Google+, Eric Williamson, PixelMaverick

Ironically, most of these articles were published and teams like mine were already fast at work on their “Agency POV” before the trusty Google Reps sent us the news that G+ Brand Pages had launched with the following overview:

Here are a few of the ways we hope Google+ can help you make lasting connections online with your customers:

  • Have real conversations with the right people: Hold Hangouts to chat with your customers face-to-face and use Circles to share specific messages with specific groups of your followers.
  • Inspire customers to recommend new ones: With Pages, people can now recommend your brand, not just your individual ads or sites, helping your +1’s add up faster.
  • Increase the performance of your ads: +1’s surface recommendations in search and display ads, driving better performance.
  • Across all of Google: Your +1’s reach not only the 40 million users of Google+, but all the users who come to Google every day.
As I have written about previously, I am still looking for that game-changer from Google+ that will offer the general public a unique feature that is worthy of switching (or even splitting time) from Facebook.  Perhaps there is something in the content or connections that will arise via brand pages that will create that motivation.
Until that competitive advantage is identified, I suspect that most brands will create near mirrors of what they are already doing on Facebook.  I don’t think that will motivate switching, but it will definitely create some chaos for those of us who work at ad agencies & consultancies that manage social presences for our brands/ clients.