Google on Monday (Nov. 25) launched a game show content series for its Shopping platform that’s hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and features five celebrity duos as contestants. The effort builds on previously released holiday ads that include other famous pairings and a similar theme across the competitive spirit that takes hold in the course of the season.
“We discovered around 60% of individuals wish to treat the holiday gifting period as a little little bit of friendly competition, like, ‘Who’s going to provide the perfect gift?’ So we centered a whole campaign throughout this [idea],” said Stephanie Horton, senior director of world commerce marketing for Google.
A brand new episode of the game show, “Can You Gift It?,” will drop on YouTube on daily basis this week, culminating on Black Friday, with cutdowns running across digital and social. Each episode features Kimmel and a pair of celebrities who compete in tasks harking back to “The Price Is Right” and “The Dating Game” from a retro-styled game show set. The activities depend on Google’s holiday shopping insights and search data.
The first episode of “Can You Gift It?” stars comedian Eric André and music producer Benny Blanco, while future pairings include WNBA stars Kelsey Plum and Kahleah Copper and comedic talent Ronny Chieng, Atsuko Okatsuka, Robin Thede, Roy Wood Jr., Matt Rogers and Joel Kim Booster.
“We wanted individuals who had that actually good friendly competition vibe with one another, because if you happen to take into consideration gift giving, it’s often on your close friends or people in your loved ones. When we were occupied with it, we actually wanted to decide on individuals who had that very same relationship,” Horton said.
Google leveraged similar relationships in earlier ads which can be a part of its holiday campaign. NBA legend Dwayne Wayne and actor Gabrielle Union, who’re married, first appeared last month in ads that saw Wade doing his holiday shopping while running across town as Union used Google Shopping by the pool. This month, musicians Charli XCX and Troye Sivan appeared in 15- and 30-second spots that played up the connection between the “Brat” superstar and her “Sweat” tour mate.
The campaign will run through Dec. 5 across connected TV and social channels including TikTok, Reddit, Meta and Snap, with additional content from Google and partners like Anomaly.
Questions for the game were pulled from Google Shopping’s Holiday 100 list of the most-searched items, giving the platform a likelihood to show a component of its shopper data into marketing content. Similar tactics have been utilized by each Amazon and Walmart this holiday season. Google’s campaign moreover highlights a few of the platform’s latest commerce features, like dynamic filters and AI-powered personalization, that began rolling out to Shopping last month.
“There are so some ways to provide help to shop on Google, from reviews to filters to a few of our AI technology, so we desired to bring it to life in a way that was palatable and would humanize a few of the technology… in a fun way,” Horton said.
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