Every year, we create an online holiday video to showcase our unique workplace culture (and values like kindness, empathy, and creativity) and help make our clients (and the world) smile.
This year, we decided to do something different. Big time. We offered to send each of our team members a $100 bill with a simple directive: Use it to spread joy.
The result? #SpreadJoy is a three-minute feel-good, must-watch video – featuring many of the 630 Klicksters who, after volunteering to participate, brought joy (and often tears) to unsuspecting people across the U.S. and Canada. For every YouTube view (up to the first 10,000), Klick donated $1 to Make-A-Wish Canada to help spark joy for children with critical illnesses.
Many Klicksters took the opportunity to give back to local businesses and public service providers who have been there for them throughout the pandemic. Some pooled their dollars together, others went solo — all wore their festive ‘Klick blue’ holiday scarves and self-filmed a wide range of kind gestures, which left many recipients speechless and teary-eyed, and even prompted some to ask for a hug. The emotional footage collectively builds to the video’s crescendoing message: “When you give joy, you get joy.”
Kindness is one of Klick’s core cultural behaviors, so creating a video about kindness and spreading joy didn’t just provide a unique theme for the holidays, it gave us the opportunity to inspire others in a way that was both very meaningful and on-brand. #SpreadJoy took an aspirational approach at a time when people were looking for feel-good news stories on social and in the news.
We asked the world the question that Klicksters asked themselves: If you were given a $100 bill to make a difference in someone else’s life, what would you do?
We wanted everyone to put themselves in the shoes of the Klicksters spreading joy in the video. (And maybe even follow in their footsteps by spreading joy to others.)
Among the video’s many moving moments:
Bringing a stranger to tears by paying for a new transmission and tires for their car
Surprising a neighborhood coffee shop barista with a $100 tip
Hiring a five-piece brass band to entertain residents of a retirement community
Leaving $20-bill-filled envelopes on random car windshields with the note “Just Because”
Brightening a bad-weather day for a school crossing guard with a $100 bill and a “thank you for being you and dancing even when it’s raining”
Bringing Christmas early with toys for four young siblings who lost their parents during the pandemic and giving their grandmother $4,000 to help with their care
To help support our social strategy and generate more buzz, we set forth to create a groundswell of media coverage on launch day and pitched North American media under embargo. We focused on lifestyle media looking for uplifting, seasonal stories and key marketing trades covering holiday videos and charitable campaigns and incorporated news story shares on social to extend the video’s reach and profile.
We debuted the video internally at our company-wide Town Hall and made video assets immediately available to our 1,500 staffers for social sharing. While many hundreds of Klicksters were the stars and cinematographers, they were also our campaign influencers – many posted their own organic content, while others used Greenfly (our chosen digital media collection & distribution platform) to adapt Klick content for their social channels. Klick’s social channels played a key role in generating buzz and driving people to YouTube, leveraging assets like behind-the-scenes video content not included in the final cut.
In one month, #SpreadJoy generated more than 4.5 million YouTube views and 3.3 million social media impressions. More than 700 viewers liked the video, while many left encouraging comments, like:
“...a thoughtful, fun idea to help people connect with others and create a sense of belonging in their communities…Bravo Klick”
“Perfect way of showing how a small act of kindness can have a big impact on someone’s life!”
“The carers loved the band so much that they are going to try to make a standing engagement with them for the long-term care home!”
“What the world needs now is a little more kindness...I loved this video.”
Press coverage was also strong: 132 million earned media impressions and 159 total pieces of coverage, with dedicated features on FOXNews.com, Good Day New York, Breakfast Television (Canada), and many more, along with a variety of “Best of…” accolades in top-tier trade publications like Adweek, MediaPost, MM+M, Ads of Brands, Strategy, and The Message.
