Google's fifth annual Black-Owned Friday campaign faced the challenge of maintaining authenticity and impact while navigating evolving cultural consumption, particularly among Gen Z and Millennials. Recognizing the influence of Black creators and communities, the 2024 campaign, "Black-Owned Friday: A Day of Black-Owned Shopping," centered on these voices to connect with a broader audience.
The campaign focused on Atlanta, Georgia, a hub of Black culture, and featured three key components. A central film for YouTube documented a day of shopping at thirteen Black-owned businesses, from wellness to fashion, alongside cultural icons Druski, GloRilla, and Jayda Cheaves. Simultaneously, a network of Black creators, including WillOnAWhim and Taty Cokley, showcased their favorite Black-owned businesses on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Meta and drove additional engagement with Black-owned businesses. Finally, Google's owned channels, including the Keyword blog and social channels, featured spotlights on participating businesses, amplifying their stories and reach. A comprehensive media campaign across Google's platforms and social media supported all initiatives. This multi-pronged approach aimed to create a culturally resonant moment, driving engagement and real results for Black-owned businesses during Black Friday.
For four years, Google has celebrated Black-owned businesses during Black Friday with Black-owned Friday. Part video, part campaign, part community engagement, this program has been both a commercial and cultural success, driving incredible reach, consistent engagement, and real results for Black-owned businesses.
As a result, we came into our fifth year with a legacy to build on. At the same time, we’d been seeing huge shifts in cultural consumption behaviours, particularly within the Gen Z and Millennial demographics, that impacted the very core of how we approached Black-owned Friday. Instead of being able to rely on traditional musical talent, we knew there was a need to look further afield.
While Black-owned Friday celebrates Black-owned businesses, it's a campaign for everyone. Each year, we strive to reach the broadest possible audience, and this year, we were particularly focused on making sure everyone feels welcome to participate in supporting Black-owned businesses.
So - we faced a fourfold challenge:
Google is a brand that’s for everyone — and we believe that Black-owned businesses are for everyone to shop at and celebrate, too. That meant the target audience for this campaign was broad — essentially, all Americans.
That meant that when we were looking for an insight to crack this brief, we had to go broad as well and ask the question of who most defines and drives culture in America.
We looked into the data from previous years of Black-owned Friday, as well as publicly-available Google Trends data as our starting point in order to understand who could really appeal to everyone, while maintaining authenticity.
In the end, the answer was close to home. Black creators, musicians, influencers and communities are key cultural arbiters of the modern internet. They possess an unparalleled ability to connect with Gen Z, Millennial and emerging Alpha audiences, while shaping trends and driving cultural conversations.
We also knew there was an opportunity with the businesses we worked with themselves. Rather than just engaging them as talent or featured businesses, instead we passed the mic to them, engaging them as much as creative partners in the story we told, as businesses we featured in the campaign.
By centering the campaign around the unique perspectives and voices of these influential figures, we could not only celebrate Black-owned businesses, but also create a culturally resonant moment that truly connected with the community around these businesses, and our broader American target audience.
As we said at the start, we were coming from an already high base - but with a little effort and a lot of focus on who really moves culture, we delivered a killer campaign that delivered real value for Google.
