Delta's longstanding commitment to the LGBTQ community is a point of pride shared throughout the organization. For two consecutive years (2016, 2017), Delta has been named a Best Place to Work for LGBTQ Equality, attaining a perfect score of 100 percent on the Corporate Equality Index administered by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation. Receiving this distinction is strong validation of Delta's efforts to value diversity and helps to solidify the corporate message of being truly inclusive.
On a global level, Delta celebrates diversity and promotes unity and equal rights in every community they serve. For many years, Delta has teamed up with some of the largest regional Pride events around the world as a corporate sponsor and, more importantly, enthusiastic participants.
This past June, Delta celebrated Pride Month as an official airline sponsor of Pride festivals across the United States, Canada, and London. In addition, Delta launched a corporate initiative, #PrideInFlight, that was a key message internally and externally throughout the month of June.
Our mission was to extend these efforts on social. We set out to create an anthemic and global campaign idea that would drive awareness of Delta's involvement and commitment to pride and the LGBTQ community.
The strategic approach for Pride Month centered around our employees and the ongoing efforts they lead within their communities. The resulting creative concept was "More Than a weekend." For the LGBTQ community and Delta's Employee Equality Network, pride isn't an isolated event where they're just gay that one day of a parade. It's a culmination of a year of activism, effort, and involvement. The weekend is great, but we wanted employees to know that Delta sees everything they do outside of a weekend celebration.
Using existing assets from previous years, we created a video in honor of Delta employees at pride celebrations. The video empowers employees to continue to be fighters, lovers and life livers. The video also calls on employees to celebrate the Pride Festival no matter where they are, and most importantly keep bringing people together.
We knew that lifting employees up would also lift the organization up, so we took a step back from a brand lens to shine a spotlight on the Delta employees involved in their local Pride efforts who drive the organization forward.
In communicating Delta's LGBTQ efforts and advocacy within social, the content was published and promoted across Delta's social channels (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) in order to reach those relevant (Employees, Frequent Travelers, Previous Engagers with Delta's LGBTQ-focused content, and LGBTQ interests). A variety of content formats, such as in-feed video and Instagram Story, were created in ensuring the message was seen in numerous different ways.
The content received 10.5 million impressions and 548k video views. Being a cluttered time of product and labeled "rainbow washing", the Delta content resonated due to the use of employee involvement and the accolades mentioned. Although not the usual plane and travel content customers and followers are used to, it still effectively got the same amount of recognition on the human level.
