Jay-Z & Bing Decoded Campaign
Jay-Z's advertisement campaign for his autobiography, Decoded is
probably one of the best examples of promotional and interactive marketing. He
teamed up with creative agency, Droga5 and Microsoft search engine Bing. Droga5
created and produced the campaign, putting 320 pages of the book, in a number
of weird but significant places, all different sizes, all over the world. For
example on cheeseburger wrappers, billboards, rooftops and pool tables.
The idea was genius as the target audience was literally everyone, not
just Hip-Hop and music fans. People anywhere could see the advertisement and
more interestingly, the pages were put in places where the words on the page
bared reference to the location, such as places were Jay--Z grew up and had
memories. However this genius idea didn't top there, Jay-Z's fans could become
further involved by logging on to bing.com/jay-z and follow clues to where the
next pages might be put up. This was, of course to benefit the search engine,
by them sponsoring promotion, they also gained attention. Not to mention, the
fans could only play this treasure hunt game using the Bing search engine and nowhere
else, as you can imagine, the amount of people using Bing at this time
decreased dramatically. Due to this clever marketing, the dedicated followers
could read the whole book for free, weeks before it officially came out (if
they stayed dedicated to the treasure hunt). Plus the first finder of each
page, could text a code located at the bottom of the page and they were then
given the option to either have a copy of the page they found, signed by Jay-Z
or given tickets to a Jay-Z concert. Pages were also put in more unique places,
such as the lining of Gucci jackets, this of course was beneficial to both
Jay-Z and the fashion brand.
By putting the pages in places that involved other industries, broadened
the market and increased the amount of attention the advertisement would be
getting. Genius on the creator’s behalf and definitely one of the best
utilisations of media for advertisement purposes.
This was a break through campaign, you have covered the main thrust of the campaign - a more visual heavy piece showing some of the unusual placements of the pages would have been good, a little more about the impact on Bing as well a Jay Z was needed.
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