In partnership with Childish Gambino, Google created a first-of-its-kind AR meets AI experience, an innovation at the intersection of technology and culture to bring AR to life in a new way. Gambino’s Playmoji dances with you in your space, all the while using AI to react in real time to your facial expressions and specific context for a unique experience every time. The everyday application of the technology was also innovative. After the TV spot dropped at the Grammys, there was a 220% rise in Playground usage, leading to fans around the world playing and sharing their own dance off.

Google and Childish Gambino’s collaboration was rooted in a mission to explore the intersection of music, art, and technology. In a 3-hour motion capture session with Gambino himself, we rendered the Playmoji using Google’s AR platform, ARCore, capturing Gambino’s dance moves and facial expressions to develop the character from the ground up. Our goal was to bring the innovation into the real world in a big way by demonstrating the groundbreaking power of a Pixel 3. When developing the campaign, we needed to keep in mind that Pixel 3 is a challenger brand to iPhone and Samsung which presented us with our biggest creative challenge. In addition, we needed to collaborate with Gambino and make sure the creative upheld Gambino’s artistic integrity while also upholding the integrity of the tech innovation and product, demonstrating accurate product features.

We needed to launch the experience in a big cultural way alongside Gambino himself in order to drive engagement with Playground, ignite cultural conversation, and create a participatory social moment. Our idea: A Pixel Dance Off featuring Childish Gambino his Playmoji - a get-down battle between human and technology. Knowing Gambino had high chances of being nominated and winning a Grammy in 2019, we decided to use that moment to launch the experience. Working with Gambino, we created a TV spot that aired at the Grammys showcasing Glover dancing alongside his Playmoji Following the spot, we encouraged people to grab their Pixels and try out their own dance off. We tapped into influencers around the world and sparked the #pixeldanceoff, igniting the feeds with people around the world sharing their own covers.

Oct 2018 - AR contract with Donald Glover to create Playmoji

7 Dec 2018 - Commercial contract agreement with Donald Glover

8 Feb 2019 - Playmoji officially launched in Playgroundand Glover posted a teaser for the Grammys dance-off

10 Feb 2019 - Dropped TV Spot

11 Feb 2019 - #pixeldanceoff and Global influencer push

The Childish Gambino Playmoji represents the best of Google’s AR and AI capabilities. Each move and expression was motion captured with Gambino himself and rendered using Google’s AR platform. The Playmoji is built into Playground in the Pixel 3 camera feels lifelike thanks to the motion tracking scene understanding, and light estimation technology from Google’s AR platform, ARCore. There are 3 types of animations the Playmoji has, including (1) 54 dance animations total, (2) sentiment and reactive animations, and (3) smaller candid moments when idle. He reacts to your facial expressions in real time via machine learning, smiling when you smile. The innovation is in its commercial phase and has been one of the top downloaded Playmoji on the Play store.

Overall, the campaign yielded over 500 million impressions with the spot directly leading to an immediate 18% increase in Pixel searches. This sparked immediate cultural conversation amidst Gambino’s record breaking win and no-show. As the #pixeldanceoff ignited social feeds with over 600+ UGC videos posted within days, we saw a 220% increase in Playground usage and 180% increase in Pixel social mentions. We achieved a 318% increase in earned impressions and getting picked up by over 34 publications globally. The impact was truly global with Europe accounting for 11% of online conversation, EMEA 14%, LATAM 27%, APAC 25% and US/CAN 33%. Unexpectedly, we even saw dance off posts from celebs like Hugh Jackman, who did so without our prompting or involvement. Long-term, the YouTube video racked up 32.5 million views spawning reaction videos, covers, remixes, re-edits and more, extending the relevance of the dance off into the future.