WAYFINDING THROUGH BIAS

“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.”* When marginalized communities navigate the world, they are asked to do so using tools that prioritize someone else’s worldview. With its new map, Black & Abroad has created a way to see and navigate the United States in a way that centers both Black users and the country’s Blackness. In this way, The Black Elevation Map is transparent and purposeful about its bias.

*“How Black cartographers put racism on the map of America” – Alderman & Inwood.

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.

ACKNOWLEDGING ANCESTORS

From redlining to modern urban planning, you don’t have to look far to see ways in which maps have been used to marginalize, divide and oppress Black communities across the United States and around the world. Far from being passive to this phenomenon, Black cartographers have a long, but seldom-discussed history of counter-mapping. From W. E. B. Dubois’ powerful turn-of-the-century map-based visualizations of Black prosperity, to Victor Green’s “Green Book” travel guides and well beyond, these maps have served as acts of resistance, and windows into how power is distributed, by whom, and what might be revealed by other ways of looking at the world.

Our hope is this project helps travelers see the country in a way that prioritizes and celebrates the contributions of the Black community, while facilitating travel choices that deepen engagement and stimulate economic activity.

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.

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.

THREE AUDIENCES

1. Modern Black travelers: this millennial audience is the brand’s target, customer and the primary intended user of the map.

2. Black-owned businesses and institutions: Black & Abroad views supporting other Black-owned businesses as necessary and rewarding.

3. Allies: Anyone who appreciates The Culture.

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.

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.

TOUCHPOINTS

BlackElevationMap.com

“A Hymn Away From Home” launch film and cutdowns

27 individual business mini-documentaries

Geo-targeted, signal-triggered online media

SCALE

+330,000,000 points of data

+28,000 Black-owned businesses

+6,600 cultural sites

+100 guides with a CMS built for ongoing administration

“Add to map” for Black-owned businesses and organizations

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.

ICONS & TYPE

The 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 “Du Bois”, inspired by that legendary graphic designer’s work. Seals also created the project’s original “points of interest” icon set, based on 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

PR

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

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

INDUSTRY IMPACT

This project continues the brand’s leadership in connecting sophisticated cultural ideas with sophisticated technological execution. It raises questions about how data biases construct the world around us. How careful use of data can help, rather than harm the world. And it shows the value of placing a brand’s work within a historical continuum.

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).