Racial tension and divisive rhetoric were some of the biggest themes after the 2016 election. BLM protests, marches, and the Charlottesville riots, gave our mission to commemorate MLK added weight, so we used it as an opportunity to create a message of hope and a call for unity. We also knew that this statement wasn't entirely ours to make, so we lent our megaphone to black voices in the art community—a musician and spoken-word artist, and a visual artist and director.
With brands consistently botching attempts to enter hot-button conversations, our insight was that we needed to take a position and say something we could stand behind. Since we were honoring events of the past, we already had an authentic reason to make a statement, we just needed to not trip on ourselves and actually take a stance.
This approach resulted in 25% over-delivery on page views, 83% above benchmark for average video completion rate, 178% above social action benchmark and 14% above average time spent on page benchmark, with earned media outreach garnering 27.8 million impressions.
