Jay-Z Wins Advertising Award For His Book “Decoded”

Top Stories | hiphopucit | June 23, 2011 at 8:13 am

It’s not a Pulitzer, but Jay-Z’s book, ‘Decoded,’ is already winning awards. Yesterday (June 21), New York City-based advertising agency Droga5 won an Outdoor Grand Prix award for its “Jay-Z Decoded” advertising campaign at the Cannes Lions International Film Festival of Creativity.

In order to promote Jigga’s ‘Decoded,’ written with veteran hip-hop scribe dream hampton, Droga5 created an online game with Microsoft’s Bing search engine. Fans who participated were provided with clues that led them to find pages from the book in a variety of outdoor locales, from New York to London, in or on spots that included billboards and Brooklyn’s Marcy Projects as well as the bottom of a pool and the lining of a Gucci jacket.

For their efforts, fans who participated in the hip-hop treasure hunt would get to read select pages from the book and Microsoft’s Bing enjoyed a boost in traffic and a connection to the Jay-Z-loving demographic.

Partly as a result of Droga5′s viral marketing efforts, which started in mid-October and continued up until the book’s release on Nov. 16, Jay-Z’s ‘Decoded’ debuted at No. 3 on The New York Times Best Sellers list.

In a separate promotional campaign, Hova released a series of video vignettes and a recently released clip in which the ‘On to the Next One’ rapper insists that rap is poetry.