In late-2018, Google Pixel 3 was preparing to launch into an overcrowded smartphone market. Its competitors - iPhone, Samsung and Huawei - were dominating share using sizeable and similar marketing campaigns.

Pixel’s core objective for launch was to drive consideration by an ambitious 10% amongst their target audience. However, fighting to be heard above the noise of their competitors presented them with a substantial challenge.

Recognising the need to differentiate, Pixel seized the opportunity to bring to life their global communication platform ‘Make every day more extraordinary’ and Curiosity Rooms, a stunning landmark in the heart of London, was born.

But designing a brand experience that lasted five weeks is one thing - what about its legacy? Our media campaign needed to achieve two things; get the audience into the Curiosity Rooms and create compelling content to generate curiosity - connecting people with Pixel far beyond the streets of London.

We knew Curiosity Rooms alone wouldn’t deliver the scale needed to reach Pixel’s consideration goal, so we developed a media strategy to not only drive footfall over five weeks but also transport the magic of the brand experience far beyond its walls.

Our audience insights reiterated the importance of avoiding a mass-media approach. We were talking to 25-44 year old tech-savvy, change-makers; ‘bosses in the making’. We focused on making connections and the everyday more extraordinary.

As a result, our strategy ignored traditional ATL advertising and instead promoted channels that appealed directly to our audience, such as fly posters, paid social and influencer posts, as well as hosting panels, live events and podcasts.

We selected nine publishers from the well-known to the relatively unknown - Vogue, Guardian, Hypebeast, GQ, Wired, i-D, PAQ, Time Out and Dojo - to ensure our content creation and amplification was as diverse as our audience.

Over five weeks, we curated a series of 36 talks, podcasts, workshops, fashion shows, gigs and special events, bringing stories around the ‘make every day extraordinary’ message to life, including:

Inspired by ‘everyday’ London, designer Liam Hodges worked with Hypebeast to create a capsule collection that is still worn today.

GQ’s Editor, Dylan Jones explained how an everyday phone (Pixel 3) was used to shoot the front covers of GQ (Anthony Joshua) and Wired (Stella McCartney).

The Guardian hosted interviewees like gal-dem founder Liv Little, asking them to bring an everyday object that represented an extraordinary moment in their lives.

Cult streetwear YouTube crew PAQ made everyday staples into extraordinary catwalk creations in front of a live audience.

Filmed action was transformed into 200+ pieces of content designed specifically for our audience and published to millions across the UK, extending campaign life from five weeks to a massive three months.

We smashed our core objective of 10% increase in consideration in all areas, seeing 34% uplift in visitors to the space and our events and achieved 17% uplift amongst those that viewed our content online. Meanwhile, our biggest partner, the Guardian, reported a 27% uplift in ‘desire for Pixel 3’.

We saw our initial guaranteed delivery of 59m impressions increase to a staggering 107m by the end of the campaign. The content popularity resulted in additional inventory to promote events, editorial coverage, talent access and social posts.

Equally, with tickets in high demand, we worked with each partner to upweight and downweight media impressions based on real-time ticketing data.

Finally, we saw a +14% lift in purchase intent from those exposed to Curiosity Rooms, proving the power of quality content and partnerships.