The centerpiece of the campaign was a remix of the ’90s club classic “100% Pure Love” by Crystal Waters, which we dubbed “100% Black-Owned.” By flipping the hook to “100% Black-owned,” we reinforced the pride of Black entrepreneurship to all races and united generations of music lovers. We invited the multitalented Keke Palmer to star in the music video and record the remix with Crystal Waters herself on backup vocals. The track was released on all streaming platforms, and fans quickly claimed it as an “anthem” and “bop” that business owners are now using to create their own social content.

Google’s Black-Owned Friday campaign was born in 2020 to uplift Black-owned businesses disproportionately affected by the pandemic. Now in its 4th year, this initiative remains relevant, as only 13% of Americans say they regularly shop at Black-owned businesses. While the campaign is called Black-Owned Friday, we wanted our core message to transcend a single day.

With many of these businesses still feeling the lingering economic effects of the pandemic, our most recent iteration of the campaign focused on building awareness of and engagement with the continued importance of the message to search, shop, and support Black-owned. By spotlighting Black-owned businesses, we’re helping to spur economic equity with their counterparts to close this gap for good.

Spending at Black-owned businesses still lags behind many other businesses. Our brief was to create a social-led campaign encouraging people to shop Black-owned not only on Black Friday, but all year round using Google tools to help them to discover and connect with Black-owned businesses across the country.

Our objectives were threefold:

1) Economic Empowerment: Uplift Black-owned businesses by driving direct consumer support and providing tools for businesses to enhance their online presence in order to capitalize on increased demand.

2) Discovery: Highlight how businesses can identify as Black-owned and consumers can subsequently find Black-owned businesses via the Black-owned business badge on Google Search, Maps, and Shopping, making these businesses accessible to a wider audience year-round.

3) Cultural Shift: Amplify the narrative of supporting Black-owned businesses, igniting a movement that stretches beyond a single shopping day.

We knew that millennial and Gen Z consumers readily create content from existing sound and video elements on TikTok and Instagram. So we tapped into this behavior by setting our campaign to an inescapable earworm of a song and encouraging users to use it as the soundtrack for their own videos highlighting their business or a favorite Black-owned business. This was a successful strategy: Through community management, we saw many comments on social posts calling for the song to be available on music streaming services, and subsequently hundreds of videos were created with the song as the soundtrack. “100% Black-Owned” quickly became an evergreen anthem celebrating Black entrepreneurship that business owners are still using to create social content.

We partnered with multihyphenate talent Keke Palmer to spotlight Black-owned businesses products across the country, tapping into nostalgia by recreating ’90s club classic “100% Pure Love” by Crystal Waters. By flipping the lyrics to “100% Black-owned,” we reinforced the pride and power of Black entrepreneurship through music. This paired with a shoppable music video featuring 50+ Black-owned products and business owners. We helped businesses adopt Black-owned badges on Google Maps and created bespoke social content for them on Google’s most visible channels.

Knowing that small businesses often don’t have time/resources for marketing, we engineered the campaign as a remixable toolkit. We encouraged social engagement by releasing “100% Black-Owned” on streaming services, making it easy for Black business owners to use the song and promote their business. The track quickly became an evergreen anthem celebrating Black ownership, and business owners are still using to create their own social content.

Our campaign is anchored by a shoppable music video reimagination of Crystal Waters’ “100% Pure Love,” dubbed “100% Black-Owned.” In the film, we follow multitalented artist and Black entrepreneur Keke Palmer as she visits real Black-owned businesses, interacting with their owners and reminding everyone to shop Black-owned every day.

To accurately represent national Black businesses, we mobilized satellite team members across multiple U.S. cities to capture a range of businesses, which were seamlessly integrated into the hero film and the entire campaign during postproduction.

The campaign microsite featured products and services from Black businesses across the U.S., and gave business owners the tools and resources they needed to be discovered more easily. We had prominent out-of-home in NYC and LA, and a hyperlink on Google’s homepage, promoting Black-owned on some of the world’s most visible media, raising awareness of the importance of searching, shopping, and supporting Black-owned 100%.

“100% Black-Owned” surpassed our objectives across all campaign touchpoints:

Massive Reach: 374M+ impressions and 14.6M+ video views effectively amplified visibility of Black-owned businesses to a large audience. This directly supports our objectives of discovery and economic empowerment.

Overwhelmingly Positive Sentiment: The campaign garnered 99% positive/neutral sentiment on social, indicating a strong resonance with the campaign’s message and a cultural shift toward prioritizing support for Black-owned businesses.

Social Engagement Boom: The campaign doubled social engagement from the previous year (355K in 2023 vs. 161K engagements in 2022). This proves our success in sparking conversations, actions, and exceeding consumer mobilization goals.

Community Participation: Viewers organically used the song as a soundtrack to highlight their Black-owned businesses on Instagram and TikTok, validating the success of our participatory approach.

Positive Press: 40+ positive press mentions in major outlets like AdWeek and Black Enterprise, expanding reach and credibility.