We made the impossible happen. On one of the biggest nights in music. With one of the biggest stars in music. Donald Glover may not have shown up to accept his historic award at the Grammys, but he was there. In fact, he was all over the world. With a PR strategy that relied on disrupting a huge live viewership event with first-of-its-kind innovation, we were able to capture fans in the moment. With technology that truly paid off - featuring cutting edge AR meets AI experience that gave fans a 1:1 experience.

Our goal was to launch the Childish Gambino Playmoji to create a moment in culture alongside Glover to drive engagement with the app, ignite conversation, and create a participatory social moment. But here’s the thing...Pixel phones are the undeniable challenger brand in an industry where iPhone and Samsung take the lead. Leveraging Glover’s clout as a globally resonant creator, we needed an idea that dropped the Google Pixel 3 in culture to bring immediate attention to the brand, get people talking about Pixel, and lead to concrete actions.

Our idea: A Pixel Dance Off featuring Childish Gambino and his Playmoji - a get-down battle between human and technology. Knowing Glover had high chances of being nominated and winning a Grammy in 2019, we decided to make the Grammys our cultural moment. Working with Glover, we created a TV spot that aired during the Grammys showcasing Glover in a dance-off with his AR self. On the heels of Gambino’s record breaking win, we encouraged people around the world to grab their Pixels, download the app, and try out their own AR dance cover. We tapped influencers around the world and sparked the #pixeldanceoff, igniting the feeds with people around the world sharing their own covers and dancing together.

Use Donald Glover’s Grammys win and no show to seed the 1:1 fan experience with him at the perfect moment. To kick it off, we shared the news and assets under embargo with tech, VR and entertainment press with video/gif content of the Playmoji in action to give editors a visual ahead of the announcement. Coverage was timed to hit alongside Google’s official blog post and the launch of Childish Gambino in Playground on Pixel devices.

Coverage was positive out of the gate from those engaged, with press noting that Playground uses ARCore and ML to make Childish Gambino feel as if he is really there. Press highlighted that Google worked closely with Childish Gambino and his choreographer to make sure the Playmoji’s dance moves were on par with the real-life Gambino.

The Childish Gambino Playmoji represents the best of Google’s AR and AI capabilities coming together to disrupt one of the biggest moments in culture. Each move and expression was motion captured with Gambino himself and rendered using Google’s AR platform. Our goal was to bring this innovation into the real world for people to experience firsthand. But where we did it mattered. We pre-seeded with influencers and Google Keyword Blog post. And then dropped the TV spot that featured Gambino’s avatar, moving and reacting alongside the real Gambino at the Grammys. Moments after his historic win...and subsequent no-show. He was there in the TV spot, and ready to dance off with you from wherever - he just wasn’t at the Grammys. Immediately following broadcast, a global team of influencers shared their own dance off, sparking #pixeldanceoff and leading to over 600+ UGC videos within days of launch.

This experience captivated fans across the world with LATAM and APAC countries accounting for 27.1% and 25.1% of the total conversation online, respectively. EMEA accounted for 14.4%, Europe at 11% and the remaining 33.1% of conversation came from the US & Canada. Overall, social mentions in the six days after the event were up 180.0% YoY, due to the sustained efforts promoting the #pixeldanceoff. We were picked up in 34 consumer and tech publications by press titles who don’t usually cover Google. They were writing stories about the Playmoji, with the ad being the only presence of Donald Glover that night. The coverage significantly exceeded the amount of coverage we generally see for AR content. There were also over 600 UGC posts on Instagram and hundreds on Twitter from people who wanted to join in. Without prompting, Hugh Jackman even posted to his 24 million fans, an interesting hybrid of him working out while dancing it out with Childish.