Historically, camera film was optimised for light skin. In today’s smartphone cameras, that bias persists. To address this Google created Real Tone on its new Pixel 6 phone, a collection of technical improvements that more accurately highlight the nuances of all skin tones.

With a hard-working campaign and media plan designed around introducing the full suite of features of Pixel 6, Google wanted to dedicate time and space via a content partnership to be able to talk meaningfully about one feature in particular - Real Tone.

Real Tone had the merit to drive consideration and purchase intent for Pixel 6, in a category overwhelmingly dominated by long established competitors. The brief was to drive these business metrics, while using Real Tone to drive broader societal change by addressing image equity within Australia.

With a camera designed specifically to better represent all people, Real Tone was relevant to all Australians. To showcase the power of the Pixel camera and bring the Real Tone story to the forefront with Australian audiences, we needed to collaborate with a publishing partner who could provide access to broad reaching channels.

Nine Entertainment Group provided access to brands such as Pedestrian Group and Refinery29 who could speak authentically to the issue with existing content and teams focused on diversity, equity and inclusion. With a focus on driving societal change; collaborating with brands that shared the core campaign values provided us with authentic and relevant channels and placements.

Through our partnership, we were able to leverage national print publications for scale, ran digital banners to drive traffic to our longform content and used editorial to provide deeper understanding of the need for better image representation in our media.

We took over the nation’s largest print and digital news publications with our gallery to put the importance of positive and inclusive representation at the heart of Australia’s media industry.

Print wraps reimagined national press titles across the same week with our gallery painting news stands across the country with inclusive imagery.

We expanded our presence across Australia's digital news sites with banners driving to immersive pages that enabled viewers to explore the gallery further and read commentary from key collaborators on the project. This was supported by online video that delivered a behind the scenes peek into the project to hear from the photographers, stylists and directors involved.

To drive further discussion about the importance of inclusive and positive representations in the media, native news articles delved further into the topic across Australia’s most popular news outlets further driving the issue into the media spotlight.

Amidst a highly competitive category, demonstrating the meaningful power of Real Tone drove significant lifts in our two key marketing metrics for Pixel 6: consideration (+8%) and purchase intent (+7%). Executionally, the work surpassed media benchmarks including: immersive dwell time of 2:04 min (vs benchmark 1:01 min) and CTRs of 0.86% on billboards and 0.32% on short form content (vs benchmark of 0.05%).

More significantly, it put the importance of positive and inclusive representation at the heart of Australia’s media industry reaching over 10.6 million people and sharing 120 images for use in reporting in Australian media and by the public.