Activating Successfully Around Black History Month

Over the years, brands have leveraged Black History Month to create campaigns and activations that celebrate and honor the culture, history and successes of black people. In an era when consumers care about meaningful and Purpose-driven messaging, how do companies commemorate Black History Month without seeming inauthentic? The task should be approached delicately and respectfully, as consumers often critically evaluate the authenticity of Black History Month activations. In 2019, some of the nation’s most influential brands took unique approaches to creating purposeful and on-brand Black History Month campaigns.

Think creatively to leverage existing assets

As storytelling becomes a larger part of brand perception, it is important for Black History Month campaigns to be organic and have relevancy to a company’s products, services and Purpose. What better way to achieve this seamlessness than by leveraging core competencies and existing resources to create dynamic activations.

Brands like Lyft and Spotify have placed their Black History Month campaigns at the core of their business models. Rather than donate to a cause, ride-sharing service Lyft gave discounts for those travelling to African-American museums in 30 cities. This increased the accessibility of black culture to patrons nationwide and allowed Lyft to harness its core competencies to serve a cause. In Spotify’s case, the brand used its own assets to curate a series of playlists centered around black artists. The music-hub shared the activation on Twitter, garnering thousands of views, comments and likes that demonstrated the value that consumers place on the exhibition of black art.

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