A cornerstone of our work is amplifying diverse voices, especially within the LGBTQ+ community. Going into Pride, it was important to showcase Visible’s commitment to the LGBTQ+ community isn’t something of convenience, but rather something that lives on throughout every month of the year. Approaching Pride 2021, we were tasked with creating a social impact campaign for the LGBTQ+ community designed to be part of a greater ongoing conversation on social media. As we crafted this campaign, we aimed to accomplish two objectives:
Amplify Visible’s ongoing commitment to inclusion, particularly within the LGBTQ+ community (within the wireless service structure itself and the online creators they support)
Amplify narratives from Queer voices without co-opting them
When it came to developing the strategy, the obvious question was “what can a relatively new wireless service add to the conversation around Pride month?” Ultimately, we landed on tying the campaign back to the theme of connection and community, two core values of the Visible brand that are woven throughout brand messaging and the service.
With past influencer partnerships, Visible had success with a storytelling format, with vulnerability leading to powerful community engagement. As we worked with partners in the LGBTQ+ community, we noticed that “ family” was a sensitive topic for many Queer individuals, especially those who have struggled with feeling understood by their relatives or even been ostracized by their families of origin. With that in mind, it became clear that the best way to show up for Pride would be to amplify narratives from Queer voices to ensure that every member of the LGBTQ+ community could see themselves reflected within our campaign – from the partners selected to the content being created.
We settled on the idea of sharing “Chosen Families'' as the creative prompt for each post allowing partners to celebrate the nontraditional families that make them feel at home, while reclaiming their sense of belonging.
This aligned with Visible’s product offering and brand messaging as well. Visible offers single line wireless (and the savings) without needing to join a traditional family plan to access them. We tied in this messaging as our hero messaging to showcase how Visible champions stories from campaign partners, and prioritizes inclusion within the service itself. Messaging flowed naturally with partners sharing what family means to them, and wrapping with a non-traditional plan perfectly suited for non-traditional Chosen Families.
And because Visible has supported Queer creators with partnerships throughout the years (in 2020 almost 25% of our partner network identified as LGBTQ+), it was important to lean heavily on past partners for this campaign whose communities were familiar with Visible’s ongoing allyship and had some level of established brand trust.
Throughout Pride Month, each of our partners went live on Instagram with posts honoring their Chosen Families and encouraging others to do the same within the comments section. While Chosen Families is a concept that is recognizable within the LGBTQ+ community, each story and method of storytelling was different--and that’s what made this campaign unique. Visible supported the campaign on their account with an introductory teaser video, reshares of partner posts and a joyful wrap video featuring audience reactions, additional behind the scenes content from partners, partner stories and a prompt to continue uplifting LGTBQ+ narratives beyond June.
Our goal was to raise awareness of Visible’s ongoing allyship for the LGBTQ+ community and amplify narratives from Queer voices around a resonating topic. We partnered with 19 key LGBTQ+ partners (52% past partners) to share personal, hopeful and raw stories. Each post ended with a note about the flexibility of Visible’s service and reinforced that Visible’s social good core pillars are not just words on a website, but guiding principles that shine through in all aspects of the brand’s DNA. This narrative even earned press attention for the brand’s authentic support of diverse communities year round.
Quantitatively, we:
Beat internal benchmarks for campaign share of voice (comments specifically about the campaign or brand) by 4.5%
46% of the comments consisted of audience members sharing their own Chosen Families stories, leaning into the safe space each influencer created within the comments section with accounts like @feminist and @feministvoice
Beat internal benchmarks for engagement rate by 17.8%
Garnered over 384K total engagements with an average engagement rate of 6.22%.
Generated over 3M actual impressions and reached almost 2M accounts, amplifying key brand messaging to new and existing audiences.
