Put on a show / Above all, this campaign is an excellent product demo based on a compelling, emotionally engaging insight: letting real people experiment with the Pixel 8 Pro (rather than creating a slick, professional demo) proves that it’s easy to use and achieves results in real-world settings. The proof is in the difference in photos – the blurry, pixelated, dark, badly framed images are replaced with bright, colour-corrected portraits. The simplicity of the campaign is key. Complex, AI-enabled camera features and technical specs are conveyed in clear, friendly terms – even the least tech-savvy person can see from this campaign that the Pixel 8 Pro makes it easier to capture higher-quality images. And by offering these kits to shelters for free, Google displays confidence in its product and encourages trial.
Go for the heart / The human-interest angle of this campaign is also essential. Unlike competitor Apple’s Shot on iPhone campaign series, the Pixel Pawtraits campaign is not just about beautiful or impressive images for beauty’s sake. There is a real-world cause behind this campaign: the Google Pixel 8 Pro camera is so good it can be the difference between a dog being adopted or not. The PR-friendly campaign is designed to be shared on social and positions Google as a benevolent brand that enhances customers’ lives (in line with the brand’s mission to make users’ lives easier by making the world’s information universally accessible and useful).
As smartphone sales slow (in the third quarter of 2023, global smartphone sales dropped for the ninth quarter in a row, according to Counterpoint Research) due to the slowing of global demand amid growing market saturation, finding new ways to appeal to consumers and drive purchase consideration is increasingly important. And with a comparatively tiny share of the smartphone market (Google has 4%, compared to Apple’s 54% and Samsung’s 24%), Google must do all it can to gain new customers – particularly given the iPhone’s staggeringly high customer loyalty rate.
