In celebration of hip hop's 50th anniversary, Google's Pixel set out to address the genre's historic gender imbalance by championing female rap artists. Building on its commitment to representation through Real Tone technology, Google launched "Pixel RePresents" — a campaign that reimagined iconic rap album covers and tracks through the lens of female talent.
Partnering with Mass Appeal and YouTube Music, Pixel engaged five rising female rappers to remix influential tracks, culminating in the release of a mixtape (Pixtape), exclusive social content, and a multi-platform promotional push.
Since 2021, Google Pixel has been engaging in conversations around image equity and representation, focusing on the historic technological and media biases related to underrepresented groups. With the Pixel camera's Real Tone technology, which more accurately highlights the nuances of diverse skin tones, the brand was able to deliver unique stories and perspectives for those who have been historically marginalized. In 2022, Pixel was awarded a Grand Prix Lion for its work in this space.
In the summer of 2023, Pixel set out to celebrate the innovation, spirit, and heart that Black artists had brought to the hip hop for the genres 50th anniversary. As Google considered the history and the role Pixel could play, there was a glaring lack of representation that stood out — historically the hip hop genre was male-dominated. So, Google set out to pass the mic and bridge together generations of hip hop fans.
As Google explored hip hop's rich history, it realized female artists are overshadowed by their male peers despite major contributions to the genre. Female rappers make up only 12.8 percent of all artists nominated for major music awards and only 2.3 percent of them actually win.
Building off the equity established by Real Tone, Google set out to connect with its "switchables" audience by celebrating the music they love and continuing to champion marginalized communities.
Switchables are open to switching phones in the next 12 months. They're young (51 percent gen Z and young millennials) and ethnically diverse. Moreover, 70 percent are music lovers with hip hop being the highest-ranking genre.
Google's idea was to take iconic album art from the male-dominated decades of rap and invite female artists to reimagine these album covers and remix the chart-topping singles from these albums. Thus, "Pixel RePresents" was born.
First, Google partnered with Mass Appeal, the IP owner behind the "Hip Hop 50" project — a multi-faceted celebration of hip-hop's 50th anniversary — and YouTube Music to identify five talented young female rappers to collaborate with. Then it worked with them to re-create classic male-rapper tracks that had a profound influence on their lives and that they'd be excited to remix.
Google planned the release of each song the same as a record label would, culminating in the release of a mixtape dubbed Pixtape. The brand supported the initiative with a massive amount of PR content. Google envisioned an entire content universe to help tell new stories around beloved and nostalgic rap tracks, built primarily for social.
From behind the camera, director and photographer, Myesha Evon Gardner, led a diverse team of predominantly female artists and artisans to create the bulk of the still and video content. Google also partnered with female celebrities like Angie Martinez and K Carbon to further uplift the female voice. The entire campaign was powered by and empowered women from start to finish.
Working with Mass Appeal, Google created and released five new tracks and a mixtape, supplemented with social content centered around the songs, album artwork, and made-for-platform exclusive video that lasted 13 weeks from the end of June until September 30.
Beyond social, the content lived on EBONY.com, a custom print insert, digital banners, digital out-of-home (DOOH), custom audio spots, a bespoke Spotify experience (The Stage), a BET Awards sponsorship of "Best Female Hip Hop Artist" — revealing the winner via a Pixel Fold, and launching a commemorative Pixel Hip Hop 50 kit auctioned on live shopping platform NTWRK, with all proceeds benefiting the Universal Hip Hop Museum Foundation.
To cap it all off, Pixel had a presence at the Hip Hop 50 Anniversary sold-out concert and livestream, including surprise performances by two RePresents artists rapping alongside legends like Snoop Dogg and Too Short.
Google structured the Mass Appeal partnership on the premise that it had full rights to the content (minus the tracks, which remained with the label and/or artists). Having that control over the content allowed the brand to do what it does best — amplify each drop through various digital and social channels without the licensing restrictions that often come with custom programs like this.
With chart-topping tracks, millions of earned media impressions and a viral TikTok sound, RePresents was considered a tremendous success. Social assets also outperformed standard brand campaign assets, with YouTube and Snapchat initiatives seeing consideration lift up to 4.5 points higher than benchmarks. Additional results of the campaign included:
