Another
large portion of this book discusses the collaboration between Bing and Jay-Z
to simultaneously promote each other’s products. In 2010, Bing sought an
opportunity to introduce the world to their search engine through an integrated
experience of music, technology, and literature. Jay-Z is not just a rapper,
but an innovative entrepreneur that has been known to seize opportunities
available for expansion of his brand and products. Jay-Z was approached by Bing
prior to the release of his book. For Bing, the goal was meant to increase user
ratings through an integrated experience of different information technologies.
As it was described by Gerard Nussbaum in the trade journal titled, “Information
technology: Opening the box,” for
information technology to be successful in collaborative setting, companies
must engage their own workforce as well as the audience. He later emphasizes
that if a business, such as Bing, is able to engage users in various
industries, then they will have a much larger market share of success than if
they focused on only one aspect. Bing and Jay-Z combined their specialties to
create a multi-media experience and perfect this aspect described by Nussbaum. For
Jay-Z on the other hand, the project was meant to build the hype of his
anticipated release of Decoded, Jay-Z’s autobiography. Bing tied the whole
experience together by creating an online game of taking pictures and locating
each page that was spotted around the world.
In
a collaborative effort worldwide, every page was located and uploaded to Bing,
where it could be read before Decoded even hit stores. Bing used their Bing
Maps to allow people in Europe to locate the exact street location of each and
every page in New York City, San Francisco etc. and vice versa. Bing then
expanded their campaign by incorporating the social media and networking sites
of Twitter, Facebook, and radio. Once every page of the book had been located
and recorded, Bing digitally assembled Decoded prior to the book’s release.
Some
of the immediate impacts seen by Bing and Jay-Z through their efforts included:
the average time per visit on the interactive digital game on Bing’s website
was over 10 minutes, in just one month Bing saw an 11.7% increase in visits to
their website, for the first time ever, Bing entered the Global Top 10 Most
Visited Sights, Jay-Z’s Facebook followers grew by over one million people,
Decoded remained on the bestsellers list for 19 straight months, and Jay-Z’s
success was covered by every major news outlet from Oprah to the late night
shows. Bing and Jay-Z both became part of the pop-culture conversation as the
campaign alone earned 1.1 billion media impressions.
By
integrating the information technologies of music, business, literature, search
engines, social media, radio, television interviews, and word of mouth, the
campaign designed by Bing and Jay-Z found extraordinary success. Today’s
culture is built around communication and the most successful way to promote a
product is through integrating all forms of technologies available. The success
story of Jay-Z’s collaboration with Bing is just one example of how Jay-Z went
from street corner to corner office.
No comments:
Post a Comment