This placement was strategically bought when we realized our #1 competitor, Amazon Web Service (AWS), was putting on their biggest tech event and didn't purchase media space at a brand new venue right next door. Our goal was to draw attention to our new brand campaign and upcoming tech conference taking place in the same city just 4 months later. We secured our canvas on the world's largest video-capable screen, Sphere, measuring 160,000 square feet and with a resolution 100 times higher than most televisions.

Tech events are the bread and butter of the cloud computing industry. It’s where you engage customers, announce new products and partnerships, offer demos and experiences and most importantly, make deals - many millions of dollars’ worth. After a lull during the pandemic, this year saw 100+ in-person events, attended by thousands of global IT buyers and software developers.

In the US, the biggest ones are usually held in Las Vegas…most notably by the largest cloud company in the world, Amazon Web Services (or AWS).

Las Vegas is also home to the new technological, architectural and cultural phenomenon known as Sphere. Hosting U2 concerts and Darren Aronovsky’s latest film, the arena is the largest spherical structure in the world…and, one of the largest advertising screens available anywhere.

In 2023, those two seemingly unrelated elements collided and offered a once-in-a-million opportunity for a challenger to steal the show.

re:Invent, AWS’s annual global cloud conference, was held in Las Vegas, Nevada in November of 2023, right next door to Sphere, the impossible-to-miss largest screen in the world located just off the Vegas Strip. When AWS failed to secure the media placement there during their event, we did, taking it over with a larger-than-life brand experience that was unmistakably Google Cloud. We showed up at a party we weren’t invited to and pivoted attention away from re: Invent onto us.

While Google is a market leader, Google Cloud is a challenger in its category. As such, we have to behave and communicate like challengers—come up with creative, out-of-the-box ways to appeal to our audience whose attention is captivated by the #1 and #2 players who dominate the market, each spending hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising per year.

With one million+ data particles, we created an unapologetically bold brand animation. The particles moved 360 degrees around Sphere to form our brand icon, the Super Cloud, revealing our brand message: "The new way to cloud." And for the developers paying attention, we hid an easter egg with a first-ever command code hidden in plain sight. When entered into the Google Cloud programming console, the command code led to a discount, allowing attendees at the competing tech conference to attend our upcoming event for half the price.

Google is known for search, but for cloud computing we are a challenger brand. AWS re: Invent hosted developers and IT decision-makers from across the world, the same target audience for our cloud event, due to take place in the same place a few months later. We redirected their attendees' attention to Google Cloud, informing them we're a contender, all while building buzz for our future event in the same city – simply by securing the media placement they grossly overlooked right next door to their venue. The placement ran for over 550 minutes of airtime during the entire week of AWS's event.

The creative is housed in one million particles moving throughout the world's largest screen to reveal our brand message "The new way to cloud." We wanted to create an unmissable animated brand sculpture right next door to our competitor's event. Once the opportunity presented itself, the team acted quickly to create a brand animation that would live on the world's largest screen, developing and producing the creative in less than 6 weeks – the Sphere team noting that this was one of the fastest, engaging, and unique activations done by a brand to-date.

• 38,906 earned engagements

• Over half a million impressions

• Exceeded easter egg code activation benchmark by 220%, driving our registration numbers up.

• Helped beat registration goal, netting over 30,000 attendees for our 2024 Cloud Next conference

• 625 social media and press mentions

• 550+ minutes of airtime during the week of competitors event

Google Cloud created a bold, visually immersive, and engaging experience to demonstrate the power of Google Cloud technology, embracing a bold and confident challenger posture without overtly calling our competitor, allowing the selection of the medium itself to convey the message..