How Google reimagined a 90s club hit to champion Black-owned businesses
Black-Owned Friday is an initiative launched by Google in 2020 to provide tools and resources for Black-owned businesses. Every year it opens with a music-focussed piece of creative and in 2023 – following on from campaigns with T-Pain and Ludacris – the team at Google Brand Studio went back to the 90s, with a remake of the 1994 house classic 100% Pure Love by Crystal Waters.
To refresh and retune the 30-year-old song for this activation, actor and singer Keke Palmer covered the track, changing the title to 100% Black-Owned. This involved careful work, creatively and legally. Part of this complexity was allowing the song to be used by any Black business owner in their workplace or creative (as well as anyone else who liked the track). But launch it did, with a shoppable video featuring Keke and Crystal Waters herself, as well as a host of Black entrepreneurs dancing to the club hit.
“Part of this complexity was allowing the song to be used by any Black business owner in their workplace or creative (as well as anyone else who liked the track).”
The video has been viewed more than 14 million times, with 374 million impressions and 99% positive sentiment. The project won a Graphite Pencil in the category of Sound Design & Use of Music / Artist & Brand Collaboration.
This project, like so many, depended on creative buy-in from the talent involved. Note to anyone working on a music related project: vibes count. “This worked with a lot of luck and a great deal of patience on behalf of our team,” says Derrick C. Lee, Group Design Lead at Google. “When we approached Keke, it turned out that 100% Pure Love happened to be her mom's favourite song, which was a bit of serendipity. But another thing that we had on our side was that it happened to be the anniversary of [the song itself]. So Crystal Waters and her team were planning some tours to celebrate the anniversary of the song. We were able to get them on a call and talk things through, and they hit it off. And they really wanted to get this done, because they believed in the message.”