The São Paulo Pride Parade has been one of the biggest events for the LGBTQIAP+ community, standing for inclusiveness since 1997. When the COVID-19 pandemic prevented the Parade from happening in the city for the second year in a row, Facebook wanted to find a way to use its platform to bring the colors of Pride back to the streets.
Pride Parades draw together members of the LGBTQIAP+ community and allies to celebrate and to give strength to each other. This speaks to Facebook’s mission to connect people and their communities. This became even more important as the pandemic propelled people to turn to the platform for ways to connect and celebrate virtually - to stay close even when apart.
Through the power of people coming together on our platform, we created a celebration through content and experience, proving that people can do More Together to keep the pride spirit alive throughout Pride Month.
With a fully integrated campaign, we wanted to highlight and recognize the value of Facebook app for the LGBTQIAP+ community and use it intentionally. And demonstrate that connecting with Facebook Groups can help them do more, bringing the community together.
Facebook needed to bring the brand message, More Together, to life during Pride Month, considering that for the second consecutive year, the LGBTQ+ Parade would not physically take place due to the Covid-19 global pandemic. This denied the opportunity for the community to come together to celebrate their pride, a behavior that historically shows the collective's strength in doing more, something also present in Facebook Groups.
Facebook is one of the most accessed social networks in Brazil. But the brand has been losing cultural relevance in recent years, especially among the younger audience. This is due to the entry of new players in the market, which respond more directly to the needs of this audience, but also to the lack of content that connects to their beliefs and worldviews.
Therefore, in recent years the brand has made two important moves.
However, as a reflection of the social fabric in Brazil, a large part of the audience present on Facebook platform is conservative, challenging our approach strategy to allow room for positive engagement around social issue topics. So with Pride Month in mind, it was necessary to find the right tone of voice to impact users so that the brand message could be understood by the greatest number of people, extrapolating the LGBTQ+ community. We wanted to build a legacy for the community, and create a space to allow everyone to show their support, with inclusion at its heart.
So our idea was born from that: Let’s turn online comments and reactions into physical expression of Pride, and generate substantial, positive impact for the LGBTQ+ community - “Painting Pride”.
Under the creative platform of “More Together,” and with the active participation of Facebook Groups, community, artists, and LGBTQ+ influencers, Facebook communication and business fronts came together to create an interactive and collaborative Pride experience.
We pushed innovation to find a way to turn Facebook reactions and comments into a catalyst for a massive work of street art, painting the façade of a landmark building in downtown São Paulo. We coded patterns, hauled hundreds of gallons of paint onto its roof, built software that connected paint buckets so that every comment with our hashtag, #juntoscomorgulho, (#TogetherWithPride), would serve as a control to release the paint.
Using the mural as a background, we held a Pride-filled concert on Facebook Live featuring popular artists from the LGBTQ+ community. As more and more viewers used our hashtag, more and more paint flowed, covering the building in the colors of Pride.
To further our impact and reinforce our long term commitment with the community, if the viewers typed “I want to help”, a Messenger bot prompted ways to support LGBTQIAP+ small businesses and charities.
Lastly, throughout Pride Month, we created social content to keep the togetherness theme ongoing and engage our audience through real stories from within Facebook groups. Public figures also interacted with the stories and the audience, sharing their personal stories.
The results were astounding. In a country where LGBTQIA+ phobia and discrimination are so present, our event managed to surpass viewership and positive engagement compared to the views of the 4 Lives of the previous year's combined. 90% positive sentiment throughout the Live event showed that Facebook can bring the community together and create a space to celebrate inclusion.
In about two and a half hours of the Facebook live, we saw 60,000 comments — that’s an average of 400 people commenting per minute — and more than 1 million people engaged with our festival.
This proved that, even when we can't physically be together to celebrate the colors of Pride, Facebook can use its power of connection to build something for the community and bring the colors of Pride back to the streets.
