Campaign: Decode Jay-Z with Bing
Client/Brand: Microsoft Bing and Jay-Z's Decoded
Why is it great?
Seeing this 2011 Cannes Lions Integrated Grand Prix-winning campaign by Droga5 New York for Bing and Jay-Z was, perhaps, the moment when I truly said to myself: "Yes. I want to be in advertising."
With an objective to drive use and increase relevancy of Bing search engines with a youth audience, Droga cleverly jumped onto the bandwagon of Jay-Z and his soon-to-be-released autobiography and leveraged the hell out of it. This strategy of tapping into the target audience's passion points (Jay-Z and rap/pop music) works in this particular instance because they tied it closely to the product being advertised - Bing's search engine. In order to find all the pages of the book, which were contextually placed in geo-relevant locations, users had to use Bing to find and source them - giving them a reason to use Bing over, say, Google.
Media obviously played a huge role in this campaign and I'd be curious to know which media agency booked all the insertions? What's even more brilliant, however, is that the campaign didn't just stop at outdoor billboards, Droga5 created plaques, eating plates, burger wrappers, a pool table, a Cadillac wrapped in pages and a collectible Gucci jackets with pages sown onto the fabric.
This genius creative idea and its flawless execution was undoubtedly going to attract media attention, and every major news outlet and cultural influencer predictably put in their 2 cents. This PR/earned media strategy helped to amplify the campaign reach, hype and message.
The results of the campaign speaks for its success - Jay-Z's Decoded debuted on the Best Seller List for 19 weeks and Bing's traffic increased by 11.7%, allowing it to enter the global top 10 sites for the very first time.
