Over the past decade, San Francisco has been plagued by a “doom loop” narrative. Whether real or fiction, the idea that San Francisco is in decline has taken hold both in the national press as well as with locals. But with a new mayor and a renewed faith in the city’s leadership, there was a clear opportunity to break the doom loop and remind people why they fell in love with SF in the first place.
The goal of the “Comeback City” campaign was to create a breakthrough moment on YouTube and social that would be picked up by local and national media to bolster the comeback narrative and signal to the rest of the country that SF is back.
The singular creative vision for the campaign came to life through a collaboration between the creative team at Portal A and director Joe Talbot (A24’s Last Black Man in San Francisco). The creative they arrived at was to create a festival-worthy short film that would live on YouTube and be surrounded by dozens of short-form pieces of content. The film itself centers on a coyote (an animal that has become a mascot of SF) during a mystical journey through the city as it encounters many of the landmarks, neighborhoods, and local celebrities that make the place so unique.
Making this vision a reality was no small feat. It started with the coyote itself (a trained coydog brought in from New Mexico), a film-sized crew of local and passionate San Franciscans, and dozens of cameos – from local leaders and influencers to national celebrities like Stephen Curry and Francis Ford Coppola.
In addition to the Hero Video, the team at Portal A created over 150 social assets to be distributed across YouTube and social – from a featurette of the cameos talking about why they love SF to BTS video and stills shared by all the talent who participated.
The campaign executed on a local marketing strategy through its selection of talent and community groups. Each cameo in the video was chosen intentionally to represent a different neighborhood – from Dolores Park revelers in the Mission to skaters and surfers in the Sunset. The result was a campaign where every neighborhood felt represented and celebrated.
Not only did the campaign create the breakthrough moment that it sought out to achieve, but it did something even more unique – it made San Franciscans fall in love with their city all over again.
The campaign was viewed over 4 million times across platforms (including 800k times on YouTube), it garnered more than 15 press stories in local and national media, and it was shared 3,000+ times on social media by influential San Franciscans, including all of the celebrity talent in the video. The campaign delivered a 99% positive sentiment on YouTube and comments on social media were overwhelmingly positive, including testimonials like ”this brought tears to my eyes” and “Keep San Francisco Weird.”
The campaign also bolstered neighborhood pride, with dozens of groups – from the San Francisco Fire Department to the Dolphin Club, a local swimming group – sharing the video on social media as well as internal Whatsapp and Discord groups.
The day the video released, it appeared on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle with a feature-length write-up of the viral love letter to SF.
