The Love Has No Labels campaign is a movement that was created to flood culture with messages of unbiased love. The campaign’s mission is to celebrate diversity in an effort to reduce bias, and to promote meaningful actions that create a more inclusive world across race, age, gender, identity, sexual orientation, religion, and disability. Launched in 2015, Love Has No Labels continues to identify opportunities to create campaigns that are embedded into the current cultural zeitgeist.
With technology being the heartbeat of today’s culture, the Love Has No Labels campaign was eager to extend messaging through a partnership with Amazon Ads, tapping Amazon’s Alexa to share acts of love and inspire inclusiveness in homes across America. Some may say that Alexa is a cultural icon on its own as many rely on the voice assistant technology to answer requests and carry out daily tasks. Although Alexa has become an integral part of people’s everyday lives - it can effectively play your favorite music, control smart devices, tell you amusing jokes, and more - when we asked, “Alexa, what is love?” we noticed the response lacked awareness. “Sorry, I don’t have human love figured out quite yet,” followed by a quote from famous historical authors who didn’t represent US demographics.
In collaboration with Amazon Ads Brand Innovation Lab our goal was to harness this opportunity to evolve and diversify Alexa while furthering Love Has No Labels’ efforts to engulf culture with messages of diversity and inclusion.
Amazon’s Alexa has been asked millions of questions about love, and until now, the responses seemed to lack a human touch and did not encompass the diversity that reflects the American population. To be true to the Love Has No Labels mission of reducing bias and hate by celebrating diversity and inclusion, Alexa would need to evolve. We were faced with the challenge of finding a method for virtual voice assistant technology to truly convey humanity, love, and inclusion.
Ad Council and Amazon Ads Brand Innovation Lab collaborated on a first-to-market technology solution that allowed Alexa to pass the microphone to people of various backgrounds and identities to share what love means to them. Seeking out diverse representation we went to the South Side of Chicago to tap inclusive communities for their honest and authentic [human] responses. Their voice recordings were used to update Alexa’s back-end technology and these are the voices you’ll now hear when asking an Alexa-enabled device, “Alexa, What is Love?”
To drive a message that asks people to consider love as an action, while aligning with the multimedia nature of today’s world, we knew it was important to develop captivating and engaging content. We therefore supported the voice-assistant campaign with a documentary-style short film directed by award-winning Rodney Lucas, a South Side native. The film delves deeper into the diverse lives of the talent featured in Alexa’s new response and illustrates how acts of love have helped them, and others, feel more included. In one instance, when a person asks Alexa “What is Love?,” the response they receive is from Dianne, a community leader and volunteer, who responds: “My love is in the safe space I create for Black women.”
The "Alexa, What is Love?” campaign is being promoted in Amazon audio ads, Amazon streaming TV ads, social media, digital formats nationwide, and Out Of Home placements. A campaign-specific landing page was created for people to learn more, which features the aforementioned individuals’ stories as well as a list of inclusive actions everyone can take (http://amazon.com/lovehasnolabels). When we act with love—by educating ourselves, taking meaningful action, and supporting organizations that help communities who have been marginalized—we can combat bias, discrimination, and hate.
Upon the campaign’s launch in November 2021, the number “Alexa, What is Love?” utterances doubled. Audiences were engaged and curious to hear more from Alexa and friends. Additionally, the campaign’s supporting media and custom landing page garnered benchmark-beating performance.
Supporting media has garnered roughly 1B impressions since its 2021 launch, and has reached 285M unique users.
The video asset continues to garner a 97% video completion rate which is above Amazon’s 95% VCR benchmark, indicating that users find the creative engaging and are watching all the way through
All up engagement rate on the custom landing page is 82% which is +132% above Amazon benchmarks indicating that overall engagement is quite high on the page and customers are interacting with the elements that further shares stories of unbiased love and inclusive actions.
95% of the audience who visited the Custom Landing Page were seen to scroll 100% down the page (+187% above Amazon benchmarks)
Influencers shared content on social media, garnering organic amplification of the “Alexa, What is Love” campaign
Press coverage supported the campaign across multiple industry and mainstream publications
