Google and PAPER came together to highlight small businesses that are leading the biggest trends of the summer based on Google’s trending search data and amplifying Google Shopping, a seamless place to purchase their products.
We were tasked with highlighting these small businesses through high-impact editorial stories that embody PAPER's expertise in creating content for the internet, our distinct editorial lens, and our ability to identify and engage talent that surprises and delights consumers.
This content would also premiere on an entirely new IG handle for Google via @GoogleShopping; we would work in tandem to launch this new platform and utilize the custom content we produced to drive mass awareness for these small businesses.
When Google approached us, we were faced with an exciting challenge: how does the biggest platform in the world support small businesses through a disruptive lens?
PAPER was made for this, through our ability to create disruptive content and curate products and themes that are rooted in analytic data, we translated these elements into unique, unexpected, and ultimately scroll-stopping content. Not to mention this was accomplished at breakneck speed with only three months to get the whole project done.
We created an entirely new website that would keep the brand DNA while ramping up consumer excitement to shop. We treated this as we would treat the PAPER media property - by creating content people want to engage with based on our keen ability to identify trends.
Within this hub we engaged unique and unexpected talent. Charles Gross, for example, is an emerging creator on TikTok, but ended up being one of the top performing assets because he is a magnet for Gen-Z and Millennial audiences. This is important because while we create the content, we are optimizing for how this will be amplified on social platforms.
We also shot JoJo Siwa for this project in a way she has never been seen before. Additionally, we engaged LGBT+ musician Dorian Electra to create an exclusive track that we knew would garner a response on TikTok, making for the most impactful, yet seemingly organic content.
Not only did we produce a spectrum of elaborate and attention-grabbing custom assets, but all this content also debuted on Google Shopping's new Instagram handle and would outperform the brand's main handle, @Google, which has 13.2M followers.
This tremendous undertaking was all for the sake of amplifying these businesses to a level of mainstream appeal and giving them a chance to shine next to larger brands that already have a strong foothold in the e-commerce sphere.
- Content generated 28M+ organic impressions on its first day
- 47M impressions were booked in the first week
- PAPER captured 11x celebrities, a range of talent including actors, models, musicians, and influencers.
- Brought attention and visibility to 69x unique brands, a spectrum of small and medium businesses that also included brands led by AAPI, LGBTQ+, BIPOC, and female principles, amongst others.
- Captured 96x images and 5x videos across 10x articles on the PAPER x Google digital hub
- Our custom content outperformed the content on Google’s primary handle by 25x.
The social impact came from the fact that we offered the amplification at no cost to these independent (some minority-led) businesses who otherwise may not have gotten the broad-scale visibility
