This campaign deployed celebrated musicians and a strategic inversion of a big cultural moment, Black Friday, to garner wide attention to the plight of Black-owned businesses during the pandemic. With little to no paid support, the work was featured across more than 80 outlets, including CNN, CBS, People, Forbes, AdWeek, Yahoo! and Afrotrends. Wyclef Jean and Ari Lennox also shared their support (and their jingles) across their channels, driving awareness and conversation among consumers. In total, the campaign garnered over half a billion impressions.

We wanted to continue to fulfill our brand promise of ‘helpfulness.’ In 2020, everyone needed some help, but particularly small businesses.

Digging in, we found Black-owned businesses were disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. A stunning 41% closed in its wake, more than any other racial group in America.

Knowing the holiday season would be critical to their survival, we decided to flip the focus of the biggest shopping moment of the year—turning Black Friday into Black-owned Friday.

Our brief was simple, yet incredibly challenging: How do we cut through the noise of Black Friday, one of the busiest shopping days of the year?

Our objective was twofold. We wanted Black-owned businesses to adopt the new Black-owned business badge to their Business Profile on Google Search and Maps to make it easier for consumers to support them. And we wanted to drive consumers to shop from Black-owned businesses for their holiday shopping.

We created an initiative to promote real change and support of Black-owned businesses. We co-opted the biggest shopping moment of the year, to flip the focus (and most importantly funnel some of the massive amounts of spending) towards Black-owned businesses. Partnering with the U.S. Black Chambers, Inc., we reimagined Black Friday as Black-owned Friday.

To encourage consumers to shop from Black-owned businesses and cut through the noise of the holiday season, we decided to use a nostalgic throwback: the good ol’ jingle. We asked celebrated Black artists Wyclef Jean and Ari Lennox to write personalized jingles for real Black-owned businesses they loved, which we turned into animated videos created by Black visual artists, as well as Spotify tracks. Wyclef also created a Black-ownd Friday anthem and helped spread the word via press and social media about the value Black-owned businesses bring to their communities and the help they need.

We co-opted the biggest shopping moment of the year to flip the focus (and most importantly funnel some of the massive amounts of spending) towards small Black-owned businesses.

The problem was big enough that we knew we had to go after a wide and diverse audience, including those who may not have been attuned to BLM-related activism on this issue over the summer.

Our creative partnership with influential Black musicians and visual artists helped us reach entertainment fans, as well as mainstream and business press. We created animated videos for the jingles, which gave press outlets content to embed in their stories, as well as made the content more shareable on social channels. The jingles were also uploaded to Digital Service Providers (DSP) like Spotify as tracks and listed on the artists’ channels, putting our message directly in front of their fans.

The team launched a multi-pronged PR campaign across verticals, including ad trades, business publications, Black and cultural outlets, and consumer media. Wyclef Jean’s celebrity helped us to secure attention in consumer and business press, having him author a blog post on Google’s official blog about the campaign and serving as the spokesperson for a number of interviews. Our press pitch included visual assets, relevant statistics, resources, and partnerships quotes. This approach landed robust coverage in a range of outlets, including CNN, Black Star News, Forbes, AdWeek, People, Bloomberg Radio, NY1 and more.

Press coverage was strategically geared towards bringing awareness of the campaign leading up to Black Friday. It culminated on Black Friday (November 27) with a five-minute broadcast segment on CBS This Morning, featuring an interview with Wyclef and showcasing the ability for consumers to use Google to search with queries like “Black-owned shops near me.”

We had placements in 80+ press outlets, including CNN, CBS, People, Forbes, AdWeek, and Afrotrends. Wyclef Jean and Ari Lennox used their channels to share their jingles, helping to garner 260M+ organic social impressions, 5M+ YouTube video views, 4M+ organic streams on Spotify, and 830K landing page visitors. Overall, the campaign garnered a huge amount of reach with virtually no paid media support: over half a billion impressions.

We impacted social conversation with a +300% increase in mentions of ‘black-owned businesses’ and social sentiment was very high, 84% positive or neutral, despite politicization of the topic online. Excluding a spike during the BLM protests in July, Google Trends data showed that searches for "Black owned businesses" had a five-year peak on November 27 (Black Friday). And most importantly, we drove real impact for the featured businesses: GROUNDED (Ari Lennox’s featured business) saw a 3000% sales increase from Instagram traffic.

This work built directly on grassroots organizing in support of Black-owned businesses during the Black Lives Matter protests in May and June of 2020, which dominated news media. Ordinary people, activist celebrities, and news media were sharing lists of Black-owned businesses to support.

Beyonce, leveraging this momentum, launched her single BLACK PARADE which used media attention for the song to drive fans to her website where they could find and shop a curated directory of Black-owned businesses. We similarly tapped into the power of personal connection between stars and specific Black-owned businesses to drive press, impact, and authentic enthusiasm for this issue.