Title	GOOGLE NIGHT WALK
Brand	GOOGLE
Product/Service	INTERNET
Category	A10. INTEGRATED CONTENT CAMPAIGN
Entrant Company	72ANDSUNNY Amsterdam, THE NETHERLANDS
Contributing Company	72ANDSUNNY Amsterdam, THE NETHERLANDS
Contributing Company 2	GOOGLE CREATIVE LAB London, UNITED KINGDOM
Media Agency	ESSENCE DIGITAL London, UNITED KINGDOM
Production Company	MEDIAMONKS Hilversum, THE NETHERLANDS
Production Company 2	EPOCH LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM
Production Company 3	BRENNINKMEIJER & ISSACS Amsterdam, THE NETHERLANDS

Name	Company	Position
Steve Vranakis	Google Creative Lab EMEA	Executive Creative Director
Graham Bednash	EMEA Google	Director Of Consumer Marketing
Kristell Schuber	Google South/West Europe	Marketing Director
David Bruno	Google Creative Lab EMEA	Senior Creative
Anne/Sophie Kasper	EMEA Google	Head Of Brand Marketing
Chloé Broughton	Google France	Product Marketing Manager
Carlo Cavallone	72andsunny	Executive Creative Director
Gregg Clampffer	72andsunny	Creative Director
Micky Coyne	72andsunny	Creative Director
Patric Franz	72andsunny	Art Director
Yann Corlay	72andsunny	Lead Writer
Mike Goller	72andsunny	Group Brand Director
Naomi Bartle	72andsunny	Brand Director
Stephanie Newman	72andsunny	Director Of Strategy
Carsten Pruijis	72andsunny	Strategist
Phil Mccluney	72andsunny	Broadcast Producer
Sanne Drogtrop	72andsunny	Digital Executive Producer
Gabor Szalatnyai	72andsunny	Creative Technologist
Lucid/David Knox	Epoch Film	Film Director/Producer
Joe Roberts	Mediamonks	Film Director

The Campaign

Increasingly in Europe, it’s fair to describe almost everything as branded content – if our definition of branded content is “entertaining and engaging content for an audience”. The best marketing in Europe today is created to first make people laugh, think, even cry; and through these emotions, to draw people to one brand, or product, over another. Product integration is becoming more organic and natural; product messaging less clunky; and branding less in-your-face; so that increasingly, even traditional paid-for advertising campaigns resemble branded entertainment. So to describe the current situation around branded entertainment in our region in a word: competitive.

Results

People use Google everyday to make their lives a little easier. Some people use Google to accomplish extraordinary things. Google wanted to share these stories with the world and remind people how Google enriches people’s lives. Which is why we created the Google Stories Platform. One of these stories was about Julie and her Soundwalks. Soundwalks are audio guides between fiction and reality, soundscapes composed of sounds, noises and voices that take people on a unique poetic journey through Marseille. Each Soundwalk comes with a Google Map, and is an invitation for people to go see and meet by themselves. But not everyone can get to Marseille to explore the city at night with Julie. So we took her project a step further and created a digital, fully interactive version of one of her favourite Soundwalks. A short film invited users to the first ever nighttime Street View, NIght Walk in Marseille. In a fully immersive experience users could enjoy an audio tour, explore the streets and back alleys themselves, get a cat’s POV of one of the neighbourhood’s best restaurants, meet locals, street musicians and even observe an artist painting a mural in front of them. To accurately recreate the Soundwalk experience, we immersed users in the sounds and music of Marseille.The soundscapes were built from four layers: ambient sounds, directional sounds, the audio tour, and a bespoke music track. Using ‘binaural sound technology’ we controlled each layer individually which allowed the sound to react to the user’s movements in the experience. NIght Walk in Marseille, represents what we see as the future of digital storytelling, combining the best of age-old approaches with the most exciting developments in technology. And in this case, allowing people from all over the world to experience Marseille for themselves.

The campaign was first launched to the French market with a media mix including digital banners and traditional TV including a :90 film, alongside :30s and :15s, aided by a four day Twitter campaign (where the campaign became a trending topic over the launch weekend) - all media drove to the digital content experience. To open the content to global audiences, we took over Google’s global social channels, and devised an influencer outreach strategy targeting specific interest groups including tech, street art, youth culture, tourism, resulting in coverage in Buzzfeed, Conde Nast Traveller and a host of prominent cultural outlets.

During the first four weeks after launch, we saw over a million visitors taking a walk through the back-streets of Marseille, spending over 2.5 minutes with the experience, exceeding benchmarks. The response to the campaign was overwhelmingly positive, striking a cultural chord with fans all over the world via influential press sources like The Verge, Engadget, Konbini and BuzzFeed, etc. The latter actually called the experience “The best use of Google maps yet.” PR efforts generated close to 88 million potential impressions, with the campaign gracing the front page of national French newspapers, online sites, radio and national television - there was great public support for Google telling the story of Marseille (a national treasure often overlooked). When it came to social media and activating the campaign across Google’s global pages, our Twitter campaign was the most effective for Google EMEA to date, with topic trending in France during the launch weekend - with social efforts generating over 40 million social impressions. Industry benchmark states that around 50% of visitors bounce on first landing of a digital experience, whilst for NightWalk 85% of the visitors stayed to see more.