In 2020, in partnership with the U.S. Black Chambers, Inc., Google launched Black-owned Friday—reframing the busiest shopping day of the year as a moment to support Black-owned businesses. Last year, we wanted to maintain the momentum and cement it into culture and directly impact even more businesses

In 2020 there were so many brands bringing attention to issues affecting the Black community. But as we planned for the second Black-owned Friday in 2021, we wanted to do more than inspire—we needed people to act.

After a year of high-profile activism for Black-owned businesses, which were disproportionately affected by COVID, 70% of US shoppers were looking to shop Black-owned—but identifying them can be a difficult and tedious process. So we showed people how easily Google helps you find and support Black-owned businesses online and near you, no matter what you’re shopping for.

Big brands have long used product placement in famous music videos to get attention for their brands, but smaller businesses don’t have the luxury of resources to secure celebrity talent to promote their products.

So to take the focus off of big sales and move Black Friday dollars into Black communities, we tapped Grammy-Award winning artist and small business owner T-Pain to write and produce a song that encourages consumers to support Black-owned businesses no matter what they’re shopping for. It called out a wide variety of products and became the soundtrack for an interactive video that let people directly shop over 100 products from 55 Black-owned businesses (78% women-owned). The video prominently displays Google's Black-owned business badge in each scene, calls out specific references of how to use Google to search for Black-owned shops near you, and models the search behavior that we wanted people to adopt.

After a year of high-profile activism for Black-owned businesses, which were disproportionately affected by COVID, 70% of US shoppers were looking to shop Black-owned—but identifying them can be a difficult and tedious process. We wanted to show Black Friday shoppers how easily Google helps you find and support Black-owned businesses online and near you, no matter what you’re shopping for.

The strategy was to use T-Pain's track to show the breadth of Black-owned brands, and to show how easy it can be to find them using Google products.

The call to action across the campaign was to "Search, shop and support Black-owned"—whether that was directly within our music video, or near you on Google Search and Maps.

T-Pain’s custom Black-owned Friday track encourages people to wake up and consider shopping the wide breadth of Black-owned brands, sampling Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes’ iconic “Wake Up Everybody ft. Teddy Pendergrass,” a 70s anthem about the inequality happening during that time.

It became the soundtrack for an interactive film featuring 100+ shoppable products from 55 Black-owned businesses. The film follows a woman on a journey to discover Black-owned shops through fantastical worlds with the help of her guide, T-Pain.

Launched just ahead of Black Friday and brought to life by Nigerian-born director/music video visionary Daps, the film let us tap Black creators to share a story about the importance of Black-owned businesses for all consumers. It features real small business owners alongside multi-platinum artist Normani, comedian Desi Banks, and singer/actress Tanerélle. The film highlighted Google's Black-owned business badge and showed how to find Black-owned shops near you.

The campaign empowered Black business owners and was picked up in global publications with 3.71B total consumers in readership. The film garnered 7M+ YouTube views in the first two weeks, 11M+ over the first month (126% Y/Y increase) and 54.6K+ total hashtag engagements (362% Y/Y increase). Social conversation around Black-owned businesses soared with a 115% increase in posts and 83% increase in overall mentions.

The shoppable experience had 1M+ visitors, with some businesses seeing their normal Black Friday revenues increase up to 3x. In addition to supporting the featured businesses, viewers sought out Black-owned businesses in their own neighborhoods. The featured query—“black owned shops near me”—grew 610% during Black Friday week, compared to the week before.

Search interest for “black-owned businesses” doubled compared to the previous two weeks (goal: +10ppt) and “Black owned Friday” reached an all time high in the last two years.