Generating awareness & driving trial with very skeptical customers.
Google Allo Brand Campaign Development & Campus Experience Activation
Google is Allo is a messaging app that has some unique features. It’s optimized for groups and allows you to be more expressive than a typical app. It features super-cool and unique stickers, doodles, and sizable emojis and text. It also incorporates Google Assistant- to suggest restaurants nearby, movies to check out, videos to share, get directions, and look up answers together with your friends.
LMAO, a new messaging app?
There are lots of messaging apps out there. It’s a crowded space, and our primary audience (18-21 year olds) are super-loyal to their current messaging apps- Apple Messages, whatsapp, Facebook Messenger & Instagram DM, Snapchat, etc.. The challenge is to generate trial and ultimately develop loyalty. Could we find a time and place to connect with our audience when they might be receptive to change?
A time of change.
Freshman year of college (oh what a time!). This is such a major transition year, and a time when kids are actively looking to evolve and change. What better time to connect with them? So that’s what we did, and did BIG. We developed a (majorly) extensive campus marketing effort on Big 10 campuses to introduce Allo.
Authentic. AKA not lame.
We developed a voice and brand identity that made it clear that Allo is from Google, but avoided typical marketing-speak. The visual brand we created around the identity celebrated the expressiveness of the app itself. We created around a content strategy intended to drive trial. To do that effectively, we provided actual value in return. Free food, entertainment at football and basketball games- like jumbotron quizzes powered by Google assistant. All of this surrounded by posters, digital and social media marketing that worked at a brand and product level. And did we say free food?
“Seven years of college, down the drain.”
