In a year when the country was divided by one of the most bitter presidential elections in history and in the midst of a news cycle regularly punctuated by tragedy, TODAY and NBCUniversal Corporate Social Responsibility had the opportunity to deliver a powerful platform that sparked an optimistic movement at the very moment we needed it most.
During the 2016 holiday season, we wanted to restore faith in humanity by rallying the brands of NBCUniversal, our partners and our audience behind one simple idea -- kindness.
We asked the public to call out the people in their life who are always helping others--to go out and do something kind for others, themselves, and the earth and to share stories that remind us all of the fundamental goodness of human nature.
With an emphasis on storytelling and participation, 19 NBCUniversal brands (TODAY, CNBC, Telemundo, Bravo, Comcast, Sprout, Thursday Night Football, NBC News, MSNBC, WWE, Syfy, USA, NBCSports, etc.) rallied around #ShareKindness, a cross-channel, cross-platform initiative highlighting everyday stories of empathy, generosity and humanity across our outlets.
Rallying around the platform, we created a movement that aggregated and amplified random acts of kindness, while simultaneously empowering consumers to take actions on their own.
Share Kindness is an annual campaign, which is being programmed for year-around implementation in the near future.
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NBCUniversal challenged the American people to #ShareKindness as individuals, as a community, and as a family as we approached the holiday and divisive election season. We also encouraged our different brand audiences to get involved in helping us fulfill an ambitious goal: generating 1 MILLION ACTS OF KINDNESS – a goal we surpassed. In mid-November 2016, TODAY kicked off World Kindness Day and over the course of 40 days, with brands across NBCUniversal rallying around the campaign using cross-brand consumer activation. A heavy social/digital component helped additional brands develop their own promotions around the campaign. Here are some key highlights from the campaign:
To attract users, we built an optimized microsite and mobile optimized hub to showcase stories, videos and external links to NBCU brands with a prominent counter that tallies acts of kindness across social media with the hashtag #ShareKindness Through new partnerships, including YMCA (sponsor), Lego, and Lady Gaga's Born this Way Foundation – the brand extended beyond editorial and marketing concepts to real-life experiences and events. For e.g.
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We executed a cross-platform Broadcast-led initiative with digital, social, experiential and event extensions that reached 40M viewers (14% of the U.S. population)
Share kindness was driven by cultural insight and built with key partners offsetting production cost and developing content
We elevated and inspired over 1.2 million acts of kindness and created organic opportunities around a tent-pole, brand-building initiative.
Social Metrics from holiday season 2016 launch:
