Google partners with Black Pound Day and content creators to support Black-owned businesses for #SpendBlack campaign

Through #SpendBlack, Google aims to help raise awareness of Black-owned businesses and encourage consumers to consciously support them.

Over the past couple of years, the challenges faced by Black-owned businesses have been magnified and intensified as many businesses have faced financial challenges due to changes in consumer habits and spending. More than half (53%) of Black entrepreneurs have suffered societal racism according to 2021 research by Lloyds Bank and Savanta. Socioeconomic inequalities have also prevented many of these businesses from scaling: the UK currently has a £3.2bn ethnic pay gap, with Black people more likely to lack savings.

Black-owned British businesses are also much less likely to access start-up funding compared with their white-owned counterparts. Black-owned businesses are four times more likely to be rejected for loans, and typically pay higher interest rates once a loan has been secured. The ongoing #SpendBlack campaign seeks to help combat these challenges and meaningfully bring about positive change through education.

Black Pound Day, founded by artist DJ Swiss in 2020,  aims to address the economic inequalities and imbalances affecting Black-owned businesses and their owners in the UK. Black Pound Day encourages consumers to spend with Black-owned businesses on the first Saturday of every month, to help facilitate change around socio-economic inequalities affecting the Black community. 

To launch the partnership between Google and Black Pound Day, Halpern worked with five content creators, including Munroe Bergdorf, David ‘Sideman’ Whitely, Tom Malone and Nicola Crentsil to use their social media platforms to raise awareness of Google’s free one-to-one mentoring sessions for Black business owners,  and encourage more people to spend Black. 

It was important that we selected creators who not only had a strong affinity towards the campaign, but who believed passionately in #SpendBlack. As well as using influencer identification tools to review audience insights and filter candidates, Halpern also conducted in-depth audits to ensure creators were authentically aligned with the campaign. Munroe is one of the UK’s strongest voices for equality. David has spoken openly about the adversities he faces daily as a Black man and left BBC Radio 1Xtra in 2020 after BBC used a racial slur in a news report. Tom has also spoken about the racist abuse his girlfriend suffers daily and Nicole founded Black Girl Fest, these individuals offered different perspectives to champion Black-owned businesses.

The influencer content was well received, garnering a strong engagement rate of over 8% on in-feed posts compared to an industry average of around 2%. Sentiment showed huge support for the campaign, with 10% of all comments directly engaging with #SpendBlack. Munroe said of the campaign, “It’s so important that Google are providing one-to-one mentoring and training to Black-owned businesses and also help to raise visibility via the Black Pound Day Directory”.

Disappointingly, sentiment analysis showed some racist comments towards the campaign and creators. Halpern believes brands that have a huge impact across the globe, such as Google have a role to shoulder the responsibility of positive change. We are proud to continue as one of Google’s long-term partners, working together with creators to raise awareness of important issues.