BLACK & ABROAD AT HOME

Black & Abroad is among the world’s most prominent niche-audience travel brands. Known for its international trips to Latin America, Europe and Africa – and its provocative “Go Back To Africa” campaign – global shifts in the travel industry created an opportunity to focus on domestic travel. With Black-owned businesses disproportionately affected by the pandemic (McKinsey), and the brand’s audience at the center of a retraumatizing conversation about systemic racism, we also saw an opportunity to provide uplifting ways for travellers to interact directly with America’s vast network of Black-owned businesses and cultural organizations.

BRIEF

Activate Black & Abroad as an emerging domestic travel brand with an uplifting, tech-forward engagement platform.

OBJECTIVES

Build the brand’s domestic travel credentials.

Stimulate interest in Black-centered domestic travel.

Create a cultural counterpoint to Black pain narratives.

SCALE

Approximately $1,000,000 USD in production

$110,000 media

INSIGHT

When marginalized communities navigate the world, they are asked to do so using tools that prioritize someone else’s worldview. Change the tools, and you could change the experience.

THE BLACK ELEVATION MAP

An uplifting domestic travel utility for Black & Abroad that visualizes Black cultural data as elevation. The greater the density of data, the higher the elevation.

See the heights of the culture at BlackElevationMap.com

NEW WAYS OF SEEING

From its Black-culture-centered international tours, to its representation-pushing online activity, Black & Abroad is known for using creativity and technology to challenge the way the world sees travel. The Black Elevation Map is a choice to see America through a lens of joy, celebration and community.

THREE AUDIENCES:

1. Modern Black Travelers.

2. Black-owned businesses and institutions.

3. Allies.

DATA VISUALIZATION

At the center, a visualization of +330,000,000 points of data, which through exploration reveals insights about population distribution, and where Black-owned businesses and cultural institutions are most likely to be present, absent, and in what abundance.

A CONTINUUM OF CREATIVITY

This project sits on a continuum of Black-led design and “counter-mapping” – a map-making practice interested in establishing and charting Black geographies at times when barriers to owning your space (disappropriation) could be as elusive as barriers to owning your body (slavery, lynching and incarceration).

ICONIC ICONS & TYPE

The bold headline font used throughout this project is “Martin” and was created by American designer Tré Seals based on Civil Rights protest posters. The body copy is another Seal typeface: “Du Bois”, inspired by that legendary graphic designer’s work. Seals also created the project’s original “points of interest” icon set, based on his survey of West African symbology.

BRAND BUILDING

116% brand lift (*Facebook Brand Lift Study)

647% greater campaign awareness than benchmark

45.4 MM impressions across paid and earned channels

BUSINESS DRIVING

302% increase in traffic to BlackAndAbroad.com

360% increase in unique visitors

971% increase in event sales and site merch

AD PERFORMANCE

6x the average 2022 monthly YouTube campaign view rate

+116% increase in ad recall, compared to control

33% beyond Facebook and Insta category benchmark for campaign awareness

293% exceeded benchmarks for key traffic clickthrough rate from digital media

DATA PERFORMANCE

+330,000,000 total points of data

+47,000,000 Black population data

+28,000 Black-owned businesses listed

+6,500 cultural markers

+1,500 social sources across 53 embedded data feeds

INDUSTRY IMPACT

This project continues the brand’s industry leadership in connecting sophisticated cultural ideas with sophisticated technological execution.

PR

“Turning heads and garnering plenty of attention online.” – Condé Nast Traveller

“The Black Excellence Visual We've Needed” – Travel Noir