As a late entrant to the category, Google Assistant was competing against first-to-market competitors Siri and Alexa that already had a well-established brand presence. So to boost awareness amongst potential users, we took advantage of a huge media moment in February 2019 -- the Oscars -- and merged Google devices powered by the magic of Assistant technology with famous scenes from iconic movies. We delighted the audience with an epic :60 spot and followed it up with extended :15 scenes - including a bonus spot featuring the movie, Psycho. We teased the work online with a YouTube masthead the day before , and extended the campaign with additional :15s and GIFs which quickly took off and spread. By the end of the campaign, we reached new audiences with 71.4% of mentions driven by new users and we generated more conversation than other brands in our category during the event.

This was a unique editing challenge as there was no script, rather we needed to identify iconic movie moments where adding a device re-contextualized the scene and in many cases, the ultimate result. In just five weeks, we watched over 200 movies, identifying the best scenes, while simultaneously reaching out to agents, negotiating with studios, directors, talent...all the while editing, compositing and creating visual effects. With negotiations happening days before the film first aired, we were continuously re-inventing the edit. In the end, those 200+ movies watched, 4000+ hours logged, 50 agents called, and 7 compositors tirelessly creating visual effects - led to a sophisticated piece that struck exactly the right chord with users. The final edits consisted of a :60 anthem spot with additional extended scenes that were built into separate :15 spots that aired throughout Oscar night and one bonus :15 spot that wasn't included in the anthem.