imi guide is an innovative mental health resource for LGBTQ+ teens, building a safe space for them to discuss and celebrate identity and community. This free mental health tool built for and with LGBTQ+ teens is a go-to guide for those looking for support and help in affirming their identities and learning practical ways to cope with minority stress that is helpful, relevant, inclusive, and joyful. For the launch of the Hopelab product, Ghost Note was hired to develop a robust go-to-market strategy and campaign to inspire LGBTQ teens, especially QTBIPOC, and those with multiple marginalized identities.
We wanted to create a campaign that really showed Gen-Z teens that we understood them, and wanted to create space for them to tell their stories. We shone a spotlight on community members, emphasizing support and encouragement to use the mental health tool.
In order to reach our target audience of BIPOC LGBTQ+ teens aged 13-19, we worked with youth creators to develop engaging content pieces that our audience can relate to, resulting in 115,308 accounts reached within the 13-19 demographic. To establish an online presence for imi, we developed a social framework of authentic content from youth influencers and queer artists that reinforced imi's themes and message, resulting in over 4,000 accounts engaged. By including consistent CTAs throughout all content, we were able to drive membership to the imi web app & cultivate an active, digital community, resulting in 18,000 users driven to the website.
Our 365 campaign included sharing branded and viral content across social, web, and print applications. Our brand strategy focused on uplifting queer creators by using imi as a platform to share their content. We partnered with over 12 young queer influencers and 3 queer artists to share how they use imi, words of affirmations to queer teens, and the impact imi has had on their lives. The content was then shared across IG Reels and Tiktok, and encouraged other young LGBTQ+ teens to repost and respond to various prompts about how imi can help them in their own lives. Our queer artists were commissioned to create artworks that resonated with their individual styles and share what queer joy means to them. These artworks were used for the basis of our creative campaign, which expanded into printed materials and swag kits that were sent to both influencers and their communities. Our organic campaign also began going viral when Alyson Stoner reposted our work, sharing her own story of battling with her sexuality as a teen and the support she holds for imi. This led to us developing a partnership with her and continued viral engagement with the brand.
When it comes to the creative direction, we wanted to focus on using a bright and colorful palette that stood out on the feeds, but also felt like it was constantly changing - like feelings of queerness. This allowed the campaign to remain fresh and to have an infinitely generative approach to how the palette could come to life. The creative focused on embodying typography that stood out and showcased various expressions of styles across artists and creators. We leaned in to the Gen-Z Tiktok aesthetic when it came to creative direction of the video reels. Asking creators to share authentic selfies and photos of their safe spaces allowed us to have a photographic direction that felt relatable to the teen experience.
Collaboration: Worked with influential teens across social media to build community around imi.
Support: Created a clear path for youth to explore and affirm their identity as well as boost mental health.
Inspiration: Championed relatable LGBTQ+ BIPOC youth stories and celebrated identity exploration.
Our campaign led to massive success for imi's launch. Since then, the campaign has reached over 500k accounts and led to thousands of new leads on the imi website. Providing materials and swag kits to community centers and influencers allowed us to organically spread the word about the tool in person, and amongst grassroots communities.
Through user testing and feedback loops, the imi team was able to collect post-launch testimonials from imi users that showcased success for both the product and the marketing campaign. Teens shared that the tool was a helpful resource for navigating everyday questions and stresses around gender, stress, queerness, and stigma. Through the availability of marketing materials set up by our team, teens are easily able to share their experiences through the Tiktok prompts and community centers are able to print and customize their own imi branded materials. Overall, our campaign succeeded in propelling imi into the mental health space and was critical in the tool's success.
