We wanted to re-position Siri as the ultimate tool for getting things done. To prove its productivity potential, we paired Siri with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, the world’s busiest actor-producer-wrestler-entrepreneur, for the busiest day in history.

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BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES.

In 2017, Apple had not marketed Siri in over a year, and the service was being eclipsed by heavy marketing from Amazon and Google.

A majority of iPhone owners were not using Siri, having tried it and given up.[1] Global research showed the problem was rooted in lack of consumer understanding of what people could ask Siri to do.[2].

We needed to get people to give Siri a second chance. Our objectives:

Activations: Get lapsed or non-users to (re)activate and use Siri (measured by devices activating Siri per week).

Requests: Grow the number of Siri users, while maintaining average usage frequency (measured by average requests per device, per week).

STRATEGY

Insight: Modern culture is absurdly busy, and technology is often seen as a cause of the problem—but by making us more productive, it could also be the solution.

Strategy: Siri enables even the busiest people to be more productive by being “always at your service.”

Siri went wherever your iPhone went, and offered wide functionality that worked seamlessly with iPhone hardware. Through iPhone, Siri could play music, set reminders, call a ride, and more. These tasks met the timeless need to get things done, and helped us to own productivity where competitors could not.

EXECUTION

The heart of our communications was a 3:30 film on YouTube, in which The Rock ups his productivity with a little help from Siri. We leveraged The Rock’s social-media presence and surrounded the film with assets designed to amplify views and encourage Siri usage.

RESULTS

We succeeded in achieving our primary objectives, and saw not only an 8% increase in activations (turning Siri on), but also a 9% increase in average Siri requests per device per week.[3], indicating that we had effectively shown the breadth of its capabilities.

In addition:

Our film received 242 million views globally.[5]

Over 2200 articles led to 2.8 billion earned impressions.[6]

Search around Siri hit a 12-month high worldwide (except for China, where Baidu search showed the highest spike in nine months).[7]

Business Insider, “Here’s why people don’t use Siri regularly, even though 98% of iPhone users have tried it.” Kif Leswing, June 3, 2016, http://www.businessinsider.com/98-of-iphone-users-have-tried-siri-but-most-dont-use-it-regularly-2016-6).

Agency/Client Quantitative Research, DE, FR, UK, CN 2016.

Internal Client Usage Data, July 24, 2017–Aug 14, 2017.

Media Agency Tracking, July 24, 2017–September 4, 2017 (includes Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Youku, and apple.com).

Meltwater PR (Analytics Tool), July 24, 2017–September 4, 2017.

Google Trends, July 24, 2016–September 4, 2017, http://bit.ly/2Aq6csh.

Baidu Search Trends, January 1, 2017–September 4, 2017, http://bit.ly/2COGanA.