“Maps are not ideologically neutral location guides. Mapmakers choose what to include and exclude, and how to display information to users. These decisions can have far-reaching consequences.”* The same could be said for our industry’s use of data. All data is biased. Our responsibility is to locate and understand data biases, establish more deliberate and inclusive biases, then connect with our brands’ audiences in ways that make fewer assumptions about who they are and what they need. The Black Elevation Map is transparent and purposeful about its biased use of data. The bias, in a way, is the story.

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.

INSIGHT

When marginalized communities navigate the world, they're 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

CREATIVITY ON A CONTINUUM

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

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 likely to be present, absent, and in what abundance.

PRIORITIZING SELF-IDENTIFICATION

The data gathering process considered scale, quality, accessibility across all 50 states, ethical sourcing and race-based bias. We prioritized data from sources where users self-report their own ethnicity.

ELEMENTS OF ELEVATION

Google My Business API

Yelp! API

2020 Decennial United States Census XML

Historical Markers Database API

NASADEM natural topography

BLACK TRAVEL SOCIAL FEED

The map also contains a feed that pulls in Black travel-related social media conversations from Twitter and Instagram based on hashtag use.

TARGETING

We ran two separate audience profiles, at two different phases of the launch:

1. Interest and signal-based lookalikes – a baseline audience built on interest and travel-intent behaviour (e.g., search) that expanded in real time to people who “looked like” those who engaged most.

2. High-Value Audience – an audience designed by Kinesso, based on academic trend research into Black culture, race-based data bias work, and leveraging the Acxiom data spine.

VISUALIZING THE HEIGHTS

The project is a crafted patchwork of interwoven data and technologies:

NATURAL ELEVATION

A straight port of a global Digital Elevation Model (DEM) called NASADEM.

TOTAL & BLACK POPULATIONS

Derived from a custom choropleth monochromatic visualization that uses census tract polygonal data for geographical units. Densities computed and visualized using quantile (equal count) categorization.

BLACK-OWNED BUSINESSES

Elevation generated using an ad hoc point density visualization.

HMDB

Data tagged “African-American” pulled from the Historical Marker Database. Visualization generated as above.

POINTS OF INTEREST

CMS content and records from HMdb, combined with API data from Yelp! and Google, filtered for relevance to travel. Google Places ID used for standardization across sources. Rules for clustering and visibility by zoom level.

3D OVERLAY

Mapbox GL web library with a custom WebGL renderer, wrapped in a custom React web app.

SEARCH

Results from Mapbox service integrated to prioritize and differentiate project-specific records.

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