The tech sector needs to do more to serve Black women, and Google has a big part to play in this. In 2020, Google publicly released their Diversity Annual Report, citing Black women represented a mere 1.6% of the company workforce. With company wide hires of Black women at 2.3% and a 20% increase of Black women who left Google from 2019 to 2020. Beyond Google, the picture is equally dismal, no big 5 tech company reporting more than 6% Black employees company wide. In June 2020, after the tragic murder of George Floyd, Google CEO Sundar Pichai released a statement making a commitment to racial equity, vowing Google would do more to support the Black community with substantial investment.‘The Black Women in Tech’ campaign was developed out of this Google investment, collaborating with Women Techmakers, a global community of 300k women in tech.

Answering the call for opportunity and creative brief, The Black Women in Tech team developed this approach.. “Create a public facing multimedia campaign that inspires, brings awareness, and acknowledges the implicit and explicit barriers Black women face in the tech industry; and the long term implications of these challenges.” The integrated campaign would specifically target Black women to increase representation and inclusivity in the tech sector through transparent and authentic story telling. Importantly, the campaign would feature a variety of intersectional identities of Black self-identifying women.

Throughout the campaign, from end to end, equity and representation would be upheld through key external Black creative collaboration across all campaign components. Internally, the team would actively build and develop the campaign with the Black Advisory board, a group of Black Google employees appointed to offer directional feedback and review creative work for all of Google’s equity focused output.

We wanted to build ‘The Black Women in Tech’ website as the home of the campaign, fostering an inclusive community of belonging through storytelling and resource sharing. On the website, driving sign-ups to the Women Techmaker ‘Ambassador’ program was a key call-to-action, where Black women could receive support from Google (access to talks, workshops, mentorship and Google tech) and connect to other women in the tech industry.

With Black women (already in tech / STEM education or interested in joining) the primary audience for the campaign, we engaged a paid-media campaign to target this key demographic. Each campaign asset would be distributed and socially amplified on Women Techmaker channels (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn). Additionally, we’d leverage the larger audiences of the official ‘Google’ and ‘Google Developers’ channels (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram), whilst publishing written interviews with each video speaker on the TONL.co (diverse stock photo agency) website

From the research Google championed, we focused on imbuing the campaign storytelling with ‘radical transparency’ and ‘accountability’.

The website (design by Black owned agency BASIC) curates the user journey hosting all content. Written interviews with Black women technologists at Google offer an insight and earnest reflection of their time in tech (illustrations of each speaker designed by Black artist Rachelle Baker).

A series of inspirational and informative cinematic films uplift the voices of Black Women in tech. The first three films (A.M, Ashley, Chanelle), explore the innovation of Black women using technology to create conversation offering an educational and hopeful vision of the future. With the second two films (Sheena & Renee), immersively exploring the journey and barriers each have faced on their journey in tech.

With ‘Tech Bytes’, a series of short technical videos, by expert Black Female engineers at Google, offering tips and educational insight on tech subjects.

The campaign has been a resounding success with a strong external reception and sentiment, illustrated by the following statistics:

$1 million campaign budget

41 videos produced

5 million views

210k watch hours

52 social media posts

4 million impressions

136K pages views on Black Women in Tech Website

25% increase of Women Techmaker Ambassador sign ups

Internally, this is the largest global diversity, equity and inclusion campaign, pioneered by the internal creative agency and Production company, the Google Developer Studio. The Black Women in Tech campaign also became the most expansive within the inspiration and inclusion pillar of Google’s commitment to racial equity, funded again in 2022 to continue it’s storytelling engine.