When you think of Bing search engine, do you think Jay-Z? No? Me neither. That’s why this campaign is so brilliant.
I wish I had been living in the states when this campaign launched in 2010, I would have loved to marvel at its simplicity but incredible complexity of media planning and execution.
Droga5 was the advertising agency behind this campaign, they brought together 2 clients, Jay-Z, who was launching his memoirs Decoded and Microsoft’s new search engine Bing.
I’m always banging on about how online marketing, and specifically search marketing, needs to be contextually relevant and this is the best example I’ve ever seen of how to bring a campaign to life. The plan was, for a month before the launch of Jay-Z’s booked Decoded on 16th November 2010, to release each and every page of the book, through advertising, and place them in locations that are specific to the story on that page of the book and contextually relevant to the book’s journey.
The book’s pages were placed on basketball hoop backboards, on the bottom of pools, on bus sides and wrapped around cars, Gucci printed a page of the book on a limited edition leather jacket lining and it could also be found on restaurant plates and place mats. Seriously, how cool is this? I hope one day to work on a campaign of such genius.
Watch this video for the full story in beautiful colour