We worked with Wyclef Jean and Ari Lennox to create original “jingles” encouraging consumers to turn Black Friday into Black-owned Friday by buying from Black-owned businesses. Our simple brief to artists: pick a Black-owned business you love and create an original track to celebrate it. Wyclef wrote a track about Vibez Juice & Vegan Cafe in New Jersey. Ari chose GROUNDED, a Black-owned online plant store. Each track was uploaded to Spotify, garnering 4M+ organic streams. Press outlets like CBS This Morning and People interviewed Wyclef about the campaign, spreading awareness to a broad audience.

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.

2020 had a disproportionately negative impact on the U.S. Black community due to COVID-19 and racial injustice. The pandemic caused 41% of Black-owned businesses to close their doors, more than any other racial group in America. And 1 in 3 Black Americans had suffered from symptoms of anxiety or depression between April and June 2020.

We were also conscious that there was a groundswell of support for the Black community, and in particular, Black-owned businesses. By October 2020, search interest for "Black-owned business" surpassed 2019 levels by more than 2,100 percent in the U.S.

Against this context, we decided that we wanted to help the Black community in a positive, uplifting way. We also wanted to ensure that our efforts would generate real help, not just nominal or performative support. Thus, our campaign’s CTA would build on the existing consumer interest to shop at Black-owned businesses.

The juxtaposition of beloved musical artists creating songs to promote small businesses they love is what made these jingles so compelling for consumers. The jingles were posted on the artists’ Spotify channels, garnering more than 4 million streams, driven in part by (organic!) placement on Spotify’s “Are & Be” playlist. We also turned the jingles into music videos, animated by Black visual artists, which have garnered 5M+ YouTube views.

We made this an ongoing campaign by launching in mid-October, each Friday highlighting a Black-owned business or resource for Black-owned businesses on Google social channels. We encouraged followers to share their favorite Black-owned businesses on social, providing sticker packs and social assets that consumers could download and share. We also encouraged businesses to add the Black-owned badge to their Business Profile, and consumers to search for Black-owned businesses. All of this was housed on a campaign landing page g.co/blackowned

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 support and jingles, driving awareness and helping to garner 260M+ organic social impressions, 5M+ YouTube video views, 4M+ organic streams on Spotify, and 830K landing page visitors. In total, the campaign garnered 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.