In honor of Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we launched a social-first campaign celebrating three employees who each embody rich, cultural traditions and values.
We want Chase to be recognized as a great place to work – which is why we developed an ongoing series to highlight the phenomenal people who are doing the work behind our great products and services.
In our commitment to celebrate and uplift diverse employees at Chase, we asked three colleagues to open their homes and share how they are passing along cultural traditions and values through generations. We get to see this through the story of Charles Lin, a Community Manager who celebrates his Chinese heritage by cooking traditional recipes passed down from his mother. Also, through the story of Mira Hole, a Managing Director who uses the art of henna to connect to her Indian heritage and share it with her daughter and her friends. Finally, through the story of Melvin Latoza, a Senior Lead Software Engineer, who connects with his Filipino heritage through music and traditional gestures like Mano Po.
We wanted each story to feel unique but relatable to our audience. With the goal of driving engagement on our social media channels, we focused on emotional storytelling and prompted our followers to share traditions, cultural practices, and values that connect them to their roots in the comments.
We hope the vulnerability, candid conversation, and pride shown in these videos gives our audience a glimpse into the people working behind the brand. We want our audience – employees and customers – to find a way to relate to these powerful stories and feel represented.
This content series came to life through creative brainstorming and strategy workshops focused on how to show up during Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. We tapped our internal diversity, equity, and inclusion communications team, our leads in the Office of Asian & Pacific Islander Affairs and our employee resource group focused on enhancing the professional development and leadership opportunities of employees of Asian and Pacific-Islander heritage. Through partnership with these teams, we were able to identify the best employees to spotlight and the right messaging to share widely through internal and external communications.
For messaging, we were able to narrow down the focus on traditions and values passed down through generations, because we acknowledge that is what makes our employees unique. We want our company to represent the customers we serve, and this messaging was aligned with our internal communications for Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
For talent sourcing, we understand the diaspora of Asia and the Pacific Islands is vast. We were intentional to identify employees who could each represent a unique perspective. By spotlighting three different cultures and traditions, we believed the stories shared could be relevant to connect to a mass, yet diverse audience. Our internal partners shared a long, diverse list of possible employees to spotlight. We were able to narrow it down to our final three due to availability and comfortability. We were asking for a lot of time and openness from these individuals. Although these stipulations made it difficult at times and we had to go back to our partners for additional suggestions, we were able to secure three phenomenal stories.
For content creation, we started preparation for this series in early February to launch by May. We were able to secure messaging and talent for three, four-hour shoots with each of our colleagues and their families. Since we were filming with employees, we had to navigate times and dates that did not infringe on their day-to-day workload. We also had to navigate the schedules of their family members because including them was essential to the storytelling. After locking in final shoot dates and capturing the content needed, our editors were able to create four videos to share throughout the month.
For the visual creative, our goal was to come across authentic, while weaving in candid moments. Including natural soundbites throughout the final videos helped the audience transport into the homes of these individuals to feel included in a special moment. We also used consistent elements – shot in the participant’s home, family included, similar shot list and answers to the following prompt: “My name is [insert name]. I connect with my [insert heritage] by [insert tradition/value].” – to help each video feel like a package. Each employee’s story was told individually and included in a final compilation video. This illustrates how we each embody different cultures and traditions, but we all live by values that can be intertwined and respected by one another.
For content amplification, we leveraged Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and a mix of different video formats to meet channel best practices. Our primary channel strategy focused on LinkedIn, since most of our audience represents employees of the company, and our primary talent in the video were Chase employees.
Our video was not only shared on our social media channels, but also through internal communications, giving more visibility to employees who deserve to have their voices heard, as well as highlighting the significant importance of culture, traditions, and values.
Through a multi-channel strategy approach, we leveraged Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, representing our largest audiences over 4.6M followers to optimize our reach. We also worked with internal partners to promote the content across newsletters, the company news page and the diversity, equity and inclusion news page. This gave employees the opportunity to engage with the stories and get-to-know their colleagues on a deeper level.
In celebration of Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we believe this video elevated the diverse voices of employees at Chase, giving them an internal- and external-facing platform to share their cultural traditions.
