Campaign objectives
Google wanted to make a bold, high impact splash when they launched their first ever mobile handset – Pixel, the phone made by Google.
Because the phone is a premium, highly tactile product, print was the perfect medium to showcase it.
Pixel is a major launch from Google, and with Christmas around the corner, they wanted something innovative, that would land in the hands of their preferred audience of tech-savvy professionals.
So, Time Out Australia offered them a first-of-its-kind product for the Australian market: a cover-wrap.
The idea
In order to achieve cut-through for Pixel at the top end of the exceptionally competitive smartphone market, we devised a strategy and premium execution that would mirror Google’s path from digital brand to something tangible.
The high-impact execution we delivered brought Google Pixel into direct alignment with two of our premium products: Time Out Sydney and Melbourne magazines. Our solution was a thematically integrated cover wrap, which graced the cover of over 58,000 copies of our bumper summer issues.
Working closely with Google’s creative team to ensure aesthetic integration between the front cover of the magazine and the wrap, we collaborated to create a concept that would work both as a cover, and a marketing device.
Platforms activated
Time Out magazines
Collaborative cover wraps of Time Out Sydney and Melbourne bumper summer issues.
Distribution
Hyper-targeted distribution and scripted handout.
Instagram
Google Pixel takeover of @timeoutsydney and
@timeoutmelbourne accounts
(Posts and Live story)
Time Out newsletter
10 Newsletter tiles per city, over the course of the campaign.
The Instagram takeover
Time Out says...
We were figuratively and literally wrapped with our Google partnership. The expanded distribution potential enabled by the cover-wrap allowed more people to experience the high-impact, glossy, contextually integrated Pixel advertisement.
The witty use of an outside and inside cover reveal gave our readers a tactile and tangible feel for the Pixel. Working with Google was a pleasure, because our audience and theirs are very well aligned. This meant that leveraging our existing relationships with activations going on throughout the summer period to get more Pixel covers into more peoples’ hands, was a seamless experience.
We drove buzz for the partnership, and magazine giveaway on social prior to launch, and our audience response was very positive, with many readers hunting for Time Out x Pixel magazines around their respective cities.
This partnership expanded the possibilities of what we can do in print for brands, and Pixel was the perfect product to introduce with it.
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