#BuyBlack Friday
A campaign focused on getting the US to #BuyBlack on Black Friday, the biggest shopping season of the year. The highlight was a weekly Facebook Live shopping show, featuring 21 businesses and their products, across six episodes, with celebrity interstitials, product demos, musical performances, and docu segments, all streamed on Facebook’s own channels to its 200+ million followers. Sheryl Sandberg even called the initiative her “favourite ever project at Facebook”.
Each week we cast, shot, wrote, edited and produced the live show (in the middle of a pandemic). Our mighty creative team of three became show-runners, working with talents such as Gabrielle Union, Miguel, Reggie Watts and our heroic host, Phoebe Robinson. Each week I scripted our show and workshopped it with Phoebe. For the first five weeks this would be an hour’s worth of content, but for the finale it was almost three hours.
We also leveraged Facebook’s own cover photo as a ‘shoppable’ store window and created Facebook ads for the businesses' products. Additionally, we created a holiday gift guide, print ads in national media, and partnered with celebrities and influencers to get the word out. Get a taster of the full campaign in this case study.
The Finale
The final live show on Black Friday was a true celebration and we brought the fun for three hours, with Reggie Watts, Miguel and six businesses all staring alongside our two hosts. You can watch the entire three-hour show here.
#BuyBlack Jingles
To add something extra special to the finale, Reggie introduced each of the businesses through the medium of a ‘jingle’. It was our gift to the businesses, something to keep beyond the campaign, and a bit of comedy between our other segments.
Print ads ran in the New York Times and other national US media across the month of November to help raise awareness of the initiative.
To plant the seed of the #BuyBlack idea with our audience, we showcased a new business in our ‘shop window’ every 4-5 days from early October.
An example of the carousel adverts we created for our businesses. Anyone that watched the live show would then be targeted with these adverts as a follow-up, prompting them to add to their cart while adding to the community, too.
