In the crowded and Apple-dominated mobile phone category, product IS cultural currency. And, with no new features for Motorola razr in 2021, we seemingly lacked a way to break through. The #HangUpOnIt campaign “flipped” smartphone marketing on its head by empowering people to act on a problem that our category has, frankly, become a portal to – the spread of online hate. We turned to influencers who stood for change and were impacted by hate to carry our message – from TikTok’s to dozens of GIFs created from their stories, and effectively shut down hate while elevating the Motorola brand.
Hate is one of the most hang-up-worthy aspects of society– whether it’s trolls writing negative comments in your feed, being criticized for dressing differently, being a party pooper– the list goes on. And culturally, we were in time of increased hate: pandemic, Asian hate, celebrity trolling, mental health awareness. After a tumultuous year, people were ready to break the mold. Which led us to see that the very flip that makes the razr iconic can give it new, more relevant place in culture today. People want to “hang up” on hate, and razr can empower them to do so. For our Change-maker audience – who are eager to embrace and drive change, who value tolerance and can relate to being attacked on social media – razr could become a symbol of defiance.
In Phase 1 of our campaign, we spread the #HangUpOnIt message across key social and messaging channels, right where the hate is happening. We identified the types of hate, judgment and shaming commonly occurring on social – from cyberbullying, racism, misogyny, body shaming, homophobia to fashion shaming, mansplaining, peer pressure and more. We activated micro influencers to tell the world what they’re hanging up on across TikTok and Instagram. We specifically selected influencers who are cultural game-changers, flipping the narrative on the norm and highlighting individuality, acceptance, and positive self-expression. Having experienced hate in one form or another, these influencers used their platform to encourage their followers to join in the #HangUpOnIt movement to stop the spread of hate by living their lives the way they want. Influencer TikTok content even caught fire with an original song! We created dozens of different GIFs from influencer content and pushed them out via GIPHY, so that they could be leveraged while messaging on any platform, giving everyone the freedom to use them wherever they were experiencing hate moments and extending the reach as much as possible.
We then launched Phase 2, which activated on a cultural moment to amplify our #HangUpOnIt message: Met Gala is fashion’s biggest event of the year – as well as a time for a lot of shaming and judgement on social media. Enter #HangUpOnIt. We teamed up with Vogue and Met Gala influencers such as Phoebe Dynevor and Joshua Jackson & Jodie Turner-Smith to share what they are “hanging up” on. These influencers spread the message through social posts, videos and articles before and during the event. Razr and our campaign message were features in Meta Gala “getting ready” videos and across Vogue’s MetGala media. In addition to social-rst activations, our campaign was supported with paid display ads that featured the razr alongside the #HangUpOnIt hashtag with a “hang up on ordinary” message. We ran takeovers on Vogue, targeting fashion readers and influencers.
The #HangUpOnIt campaign was a double win: it inspired a movement to shutdown hate and judgement on social, while contributing to rising brand awarenessand consideration metrics for Motorola and razr. We saw proven success in a few key areas: We effectively broke the norms of traditional mobile phone advertising. By focusing fully on social – and the language of social inparticular – we created a disruptive model, making the razr relevant in anew way while leveraging the iconic ip to drive real change. We engaged and empowered our Change-maker audience. We put 92 GIFs out into the world, and garnered 40.6 million GIF views, showing how viral and engaging our content was in a short time. And with the influencer reach and celebrity content across social, our campaign hashtag reached 5.9 billion views on TikTok. We contributed to growing brand awareness and attribution. In the time period following our campaign, we saw Motorola awareness and consideration reach their highest levels in five years and razr became #1 reason for interest in the Motorola brand.
