THE LEGACY OF CURIOSITY ROOMS

TitleTHE LEGACY OF CURIOSITY ROOMS
BrandGOOGLE
Product/ServicePIXEL 3
Category A03. Durable Consumer Goods including Automotive
Entrant ESSENCE London, UNITED KINGDOM
Idea Creation ESSENCE London, UNITED KINGDOM
Idea Creation 2 OMD UK London, UNITED KINGDOM
Idea Creation 3 72ANDSUNNY Amsterdam, THE NETHERLANDS
Idea Creation 4 GOOGLE London, UNITED KINGDOM
Idea Creation 5 AMPLIFY London, UNITED KINGDOM
Media Placement ESSENCE London, UNITED KINGDOM
Media Placement 2 OMD UK London, UNITED KINGDOM
PR HALPERN PR London, UNITED KINGDOM
Production AMPLIFY London, UNITED KINGDOM
Credits
Name Company Position
Essence Global Essence Essence

Why is this work relevant for Media?

At first glance, Google Pixel’s Curiosity Rooms might look far more like a beautifully-designed brand experience than a groundbreaking, multi-layered media execution. A gleaming 3-storey, brand experience that, for five weeks, dominated London’s iconic Piccadilly Circus. But sat quietly at the heart of that bold and beautiful brand experience lay an impeccably-executed, hugely successful media campaign that brought Pixel to life. In collaboration with nine hand-picked media partners, we packed Curiosity Rooms to the brim with extraordinary content, exclusive events and inspiring workshops designed to appeal to the minds and ultimately win the hearts of Pixel’s curious, experience-driven target audience.

Background

In late-2018, Google Pixel 3 was preparing to launch into an overcrowded smartphone market. Its competitors - iPhone, Samsung and Huawei - were dominating share using sizeable and similar marketing campaigns. Pixel’s core objective for launch was to drive consideration by an ambitious 10% amongst their target audience. However, fighting to be heard above the noise of their competitors presented them with a substantial challenge. Recognising the need to differentiate, Pixel seized the opportunity to bring to life their global communication platform ‘Make every day more extraordinary’ and Curiosity Rooms, a stunning landmark in the heart of London, was born. But designing a brand experience that lasted five weeks is one thing - what about its legacy? Our media campaign needed to achieve two things; get the audience into the Curiosity Rooms and create compelling content to generate curiosity - connecting people with Pixel far beyond the streets of London.

Describe the creative idea / insights (30% of vote)

From Google Hardware’s audience segmentation, we discovered more about this curious, experience-driven group, learning that 70% seek out cultural encounters over possessions. They love fashion and culture but when it comes to technology, they don’t care for the details and look more for how their choices make them ‘feel’. We realised that creating positive emotional connections between our audience and Curiosity Rooms would likely elevate their desire for the Pixel 3 and ultimately lead to the all-important consideration and ideally, purchase. Armed with this insight, we knew a mass-media approach wouldn’t work for our discerning group. Equally, if we went too niche, then reaching the +10% consideration target would be virtually impossible. We needed to create content and experiences that shaped culture, led movements, and align the Pixel brand with our audience’s values, so we did just that.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

We knew Curiosity Rooms alone wouldn’t deliver the scale needed to reach Pixel’s consideration goal, so we developed a media strategy to not only drive footfall over five weeks but also transport the magic of the brand experience far beyond its walls. Our audience insights reiterated the importance of avoiding a mass-media approach. We were talking to 25-44 year old tech-savvy, change-makers; ‘bosses in the making’. We focused on making connections and the everyday more extraordinary. As a result, our strategy ignored traditional ATL advertising and instead promoted channels that appealed directly to our audience, such as fly posters, paid social and influencer posts, as well as hosting panels, live events and podcasts. We selected nine publishers from the well-known to the relatively unknown - Vogue, Guardian, Hypebeast, GQ, Wired, i-D, PAQ, Time Out and Dojo - to ensure our content creation and amplification was as diverse as our audience.

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

Over five weeks, we curated a series of 36 talks, podcasts, workshops, fashion shows, gigs and special events, bringing stories around the ‘make every day extraordinary’ message to life, including: Inspired by ‘everyday’ London, designer Liam Hodges worked with Hypebeast to create a capsule collection that is still worn today. GQ’s Editor, Dylan Jones explained how an everyday phone (Pixel 3) was used to shoot the front covers of GQ (Anthony Joshua) and Wired (Stella McCartney). The Guardian hosted interviewees like gal-dem founder Liv Little, asking them to bring an everyday object that represented an extraordinary moment in their lives. Cult streetwear YouTube crew PAQ made everyday staples into extraordinary catwalk creations in front of a live audience. Filmed action was transformed into 200+ pieces of content designed specifically for our audience and published to millions across the UK, extending campaign life from five weeks to a massive three months.

List the results (30% of vote)

We smashed our core objective of 10% increase in consideration in all areas, seeing 34% uplift in visitors to the space and our events and achieved 17% uplift amongst those that viewed our content online. Meanwhile, our biggest partner, the Guardian, reported a 27% uplift in ‘desire for Pixel 3’. We saw our initial guaranteed delivery of 59m impressions increase to a staggering 107m by the end of the campaign. The content popularity resulted in additional inventory to promote events, editorial coverage, talent access and social posts. Equally, with tickets in high demand, we worked with each partner to upweight and downweight media impressions based on real-time ticketing data. Finally, we saw a +14% lift in purchase intent from those exposed to Curiosity Rooms, proving the power of quality content and partnerships.