Google and Childish Gambino’s collaboration was rooted in a mission to explore the intersection of music, art, and technology. In a 3-hour motion capture session with Gambino himself, we rendered the Playmoji using Google’s AR platform, ARCore, capturing Gambino’s dance moves and facial expressions to develop the character from the ground up. Our goal was to bring the innovation into the real world in a big way by demonstrating the groundbreaking power of a Pixel 3. When developing the campaign, we needed to keep in mind that Pixel 3 is a challenger brand to iPhone and Samsung which presented us with our biggest creative challenge. In addition, we needed to collaborate with Gambino and make sure the creative upheld Gambino’s artistic integrity while also upholding the integrity of the tech innovation and product, demonstrating accurate product features.

In partnership with Childish Gambino (Donald Glover), Google Pixel created a first-of-its-kind AR meets AI experience, an innovation at the intersection of technology and culture to bring AR to life in a new way. We launched the Childish Gambino Playmoji campaign at the 2019 Grammys with a TV spot of Gambino performing a dance off with his Playmoji. We leveraged the cultural conversation around Gambino’s record breaking Grammys win and no-show to command attention. We encouraged fans around the world to grab their Pixel, download the Playmoji, and try out their own AR dance cover. By tapping into influencers, we sparked the #pixeldanceoff, leading to over 180% increase in Pixel social mentions, 220% increase in Playground usage and nearly 500 million impressions overall. Ultimately, the experience led to people around the world sharing their dance moves, showing the amazing things we can do when bringing tech, music, and art together.

Use Donald Glover’s Grammys win and no show to seed the 1:1 fan experience with him at the perfect moment. To kick it off, we shared the news and assets under embargo with tech, VR and entertainment press with video/gif content of the Playmoji in action to give editors a visual ahead of the announcement. Coverage was timed to hit alongside Google’s official blog post and the launch of Childish Gambino in Playground on Pixel devices.

Coverage was positive out of the gate from those engaged, with press noting that Playground uses ARCore and ML to make Childish Gambino feel as if he is really there. Press highlighted that Google worked closely with Childish Gambino and his choreographer to make sure the Playmoji’s dance moves were on par with the real-life Gambino.

To kickoff our campaign execution, we first worked with Glover to post a teaser on his Instagram the Friday (Feb 7) before the Grammys. This got fans stirring wondering what Glover was up to, especially given the fact that he rarely posts on social. As the official smartphone sponsor of the Grammys, we leveraged the moment and partnership to put Pixel at the center of all things Grammys. On the big day (Feb 10), we dropped our TV spot right when Donald Glover was the leading conversation on social feeds. After the broadcast, conversations around the experience picked up on social and #pixeldanceoff began trending. We tapped influencers around the world to share their own dance cover which lasted days after the Grammys.

Overall, the campaign yielded over 500 million impressions with the spot directly leading to an immediate 18% increase in Pixel searches. This sparked immediate cultural conversation amidst Gambino’s record breaking win and no-show. As the #pixeldanceoff ignited social feeds with over 600+ UGC videos posted within days, we saw a 220% increase in Playground usage and 180% increase in Pixel social mentions. We achieved a 318% increase in earned impressions and getting picked up by over 34 publications globally. The impact was truly global with Europe accounting for 11% of online conversation, EMEA 14%, LATAM 27%, APAC 25% and US/CAN 33%. Unexpectedly, we even saw dance off posts from celebs like Hugh Jackman, who did so without our prompting or involvement. Long-term, the YouTube video racked up 32.5 million views spawning reaction videos, covers, remixes, re-edits and more, extending the relevance of the dance off into the future.