UPS wants to build relevance with younger and more diverse small-business owners, which is imperative to its growth. To do so, UPS can’t just reach these businesses — it has to stand up for them while battling its coolness deficit.
We knew that 32% of Latinx-owned small businesses closed during the first month of the pandemic, according to the N.Y. Federal Reserve Bank. So we decided to put the spotlight on these small businesses to uplift Latinx entrepreneurs. Since music’s a big contributor to the vibrancy of Latinx communities, it was important to:
Partner with Reggaeton global ambassador J Balvin to create the unofficial Latinx-owned small business anthem “Juntos Imparables,” which means “Unstoppable Together.”
Create an accessible hub of Latinx small businesses, reminding people that UPS is as present on social channels as it is on delivery streets by launching a 90-day TikTok Hashtag Challenge (HTC) encouraging people to create content about their own — or favorite — Latinx-owned business.
We knew UPS had to go beyond just amplifying these Latinx-owned small businesses’ products and services. So we encouraged and celebrated the entrepreneurs’ unmatched creativity — via a platform on which they wanted to be seen. With Branded Hashtag Challenges more common than ever before, smaller creators and business owners started hijacking the hashtag in their own content to boost their videos in the For You Page algorithm. Despite seeing success from hashtag hijacking, there was no unified sound for small business owners. UPS wanted to change that.
Instead of using an artist to create a track UPS could simply leverage in its advertising, we used an artist to create a track directly supporting small businesses. We also scoured NYC to highlight real Latinx-owned businesses in the music video. We also boosted the video’s authenticity by including a real UPS driver, Christopher McCall (who, a few weeks prior to filming, saved a teenage robbery victim in Chelsea).
Our official HTC generated 9.5B views. That’s not even counting additional supporting content and teaser videos. During our paid sponsorship of this post, 2.5B views were generated – which is above TikTok’s 1.77B-to-2.46B benchmark. That number has since grown organically to the current view count of 9.5B.
To put those results into perspective:
This niche campaign’s 9.5B views outpacing gen pop benchmarks is noteworthy – compared to TikTok’s three-day benchmark for video views amongst gen pop: 1.77B-to-2.46B. This campaign was aimed towards niche communities: Gen Z: ~20% of pop (Census), Hispanics and Latinos: ~18% of pop (Census), SMBs: ~10% of pop.
We were able to land 171 unique placements across a variety of publications with over 1,540,683,876 impressions.
One of the featured small businesses garnered nearly 7,000% increase in video views when they participated in the challenge and J Balvin’s duet feature.
The campaign raked in positive sentiment:
“Finally, a hashtag made for us.”
“Love this! Thanks for supporting small businesses! Especialmente latin@s owned.”
“Thank you @ups and @jbalvin for helping us spread the word about our business, forever grateful.”
“Thank you for this campaign and spotlight of our small businesses. #juntosimparables”
“Omg balvin is the best even supporting Small Hispanic businesses. Me encanta este hombre.”
“UPS is incredible! They are committed to diversity and inclusion.”
