The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2010–2011
Droga5 hides all 320 pages of Jay-Z's memoir 'Decoded' across 13 cities — Bing finds them
Before the memoir hit stores, all 320 pages were placed in real locations tied to the text; fans solved Bing clues and assembled the book online.
Bing (Microsoft) · Jay-Z
What it had to solve
Bing, Microsoft's new search engine, had to stand out against Google, and Droga5 was asked to make people want to use it. Jay-Z's memoir 'Decoded' was about to launch, and the book's lyrics were anchored to real places.
How it works
In 2010 Bing was Microsoft's challenger to Google, and Droga5's brief was to make people actually want to use the new search engine. The vehicle that appeared was Jay-Z's memoir 'Decoded', a book in which the rapper annotated his own lyrics and the places behind them — a natural fit for a search-and-maps story.
The idea made the book itself the campaign. All 320 pages were printed and installed in locations matched to their content across 13 US cities — a passage about Brooklyn went to Brooklyn, pages appeared on rooftops, bus shelters, a Cadillac and restaurant plates. Droga5 then seeded 400 clues over a month through Twitter, radio and Facebook.
Players worked from bing.com/jayz: each clue led to a Bing search and a Bing Maps pin, and the first fans at a location texted a code that exposed the page to the whole community. Five to ten pages were unlocked per day, so the book assembled itself online before it reached stores.
Microsoft said visits to Bing rose 11.7% while the campaign was live and average engagement passed 11 minutes, and Jay-Z gained about a million Facebook likes. At Cannes Lions 2011 the work won the Outdoor Grand Prix and the Integrated Grand Prix, and it became a reference case for turning a product into the plot of a campaign.
Why it lands
- The book was the medium: pages were placed where the lyrics happened, so the campaign read as a tour of Jay-Z's life, not an ad.
- Bing was not advertised; it was the only way to solve the clues, so millions of plays demonstrated the product by using it.
- Scarcity created ritual: only five to ten pages appeared daily, so players came back every day for a month.
- One mechanic connected physical and digital worlds — real installations, search, maps, social clues and texted codes formed a single game.
What it did
Fans assembled the entire book online before it hit stores. Microsoft reported an 11.7% rise in visits to Bing during the campaign, average engagement above 11 minutes, and Jay-Z gained about one million Facebook likes; the work won Outdoor and Integrated Grand Prix at Cannes Lions 2011.
What you can take
Demonstrate the product inside the story instead of describing it: because Bing was the only tool that could solve the clues, a month of play made people experience what the search engine could do.
Since then
The campaign became a standard reference for transmedia and search-driven marketing and still appears in agency case archives and award retrospectives years after bing.com/jayz shut down. It remains a case-study staple for blending out-of-home, search and social into one experience, and Droga5's two Grand Prix wins at Cannes Lions 2011 cemented its place in creative history.
Sources
- 'Jay-Z/Bing' Wins Grand Prix for Droga5
- Decode Jay-Z with Bing (D&AD archive)
- Bing: Decode JAY-Z (Ads of the World)
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