Google Pixel is one of the best smartphones on the market, and over the years, has developed a loyal user base that truly values and evangelizes its helpful features.
We recognized that our Google Pixel owners would not be able to celebrate Pride in real life this year, so formulated a plan to surprise and delight our users with bespoke features and new ways to celebrate Pride.
Our primary marketing objectives were as follows:
Increase brand love amongst Google Pixel users: We believed this campaign would give us an unique opportunity to deepen our relationship with Google Pixel users and further demonstrate Google’s commitment to inclusion and diversity.
Drive conversation around the new Pride features: Due to product development timelines, we were unable to leverage push notifications to drive awareness of the new features so we employed surprise and delight tactics to drive WOM, buzz, and more importantly FOMO among our Switchables audience (consumers who do not currently have Pixel devices but are likely to switch). We also partnered with teams across Google (e.g. Google Maps, Google) to further amplify this program.
This campaign started with the insight that amidst COVID-19, the LGBTQ+ community and allies were seeking new ways to celebrate Pride on an individual level. We recognized that phones are truly an individual experience, and we were uniquely positioned to fulfill a need for our consumers.
Our goal was to launch custom Pride-themed wallpapers, ringtones and notification sounds on all Google Pixel devices. While wallpaper and ringtones are table-stakes on mobile devices, we quickly discovered that this would be the first-ever custom collection for Pixel. We worked with our Product Marketing team to quickly devise an execution plan and commissioned a creative agency (Buck) to develop the wallpapers. For the ringtones and notification sounds, we partnered with our internal music licensing team and YouTube Music to identify influential LGBTQ+ artists and creators.
We also commissioned a wallpaper from Sydney-based artist Marita Leuver, in partnership with the Google Arts & Culture team. We felt it was important to offer artwork from different perspectives to our users and amplify local artists to a global audience.
In total, we curated 9 custom wallpapers, 6x ringtones utilizing tracks from prominent LGBTQ+ artists (Big Freedia, Sienna Liggins, Morgxn, Perfume Genius, Cakes Da Killa, Lauv & Troye Sivan) and 6x notification sounds from LGBTQ+ YouTube Creators (Tyler Oakley, Gigi Gorgeous and Big Freedia)
Our main challenge was ensuring that our Pride-themed collection was authentic and representative of the LGBTQ+ community. We closely worked with our internal Diversity, Equity, Inclusion team in the development of the wallpaper imagery, music selection and consumer messaging, as well as, our internal Gaygler network.
One challenge that we did not anticipate was the shifting global climate. Our idea was rooted in a COVID-19 insight but we quickly saw hearts and minds in America enveloped in the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement. Our campaign was light-hearted and whimsical and we did not feel it was appropriate to take away from more serious conversations on social platforms. As a result, we shifted our start-date to the end of June to allow for the voices from the Black community to rise to the top.
As we look back at the Pixel x Pride initiative, we are proud to have developed a campaign that was rooted in insight, delivered on a consumer need and provided a moment of levity in a challenging time.
This was our first time launching a campaign tied to a cultural moment within Google Pixel with custom wallpapers and ringtones. Our primary goal was to show up for customers globally as a brand, and drive social and PR impressions. We saw strong engagement with the custom content in product and the social results out-performed benchmarks:
1M+ Social Impressions
6+ PR Articles
66% Engagement Rate on @GooglePixel Instagram Story (Record High in channel History)
No paid support
