Background

Pride events are statements of equality, dignity and acceptance for the LGBTQI+ community. Every year, over 500 events are organised during Pride month (June) all around the world. However, in 2020, COVID crashed the party: IRL celebrations were cancelled, and millions of LGBTQI+ people lost their most cherished opportunity to come together and celebrate whoever they are and what they stand for. A year without Pride was inconceivable, so Pride organisations banded together to form Global Pride 2020: bringing the festivities online with a 24-hour stream of LGBTQI+ content. However, we quickly identified that the social aspect of in-person events would be missed and that we needed to find a supporting experience to achieve two key objectives: re-engage the community and generate earned media to further the LGBTQI+ movement, all with the challenge of $0 media spend.

Describe the strategy

We quickly realised the best venue wouldn’t be a traditional social network, but a social game — because games are not only free from the barriers of the outside world, but games are also places where self-expression and interaction are integrated by design. As we dug deeper, we found that LGBTQI+ people were already using games as a safe harbour to fight for more representation. One game, in particular, Animal Crossing New Horizons (ACNH), proved to have a sizable and active queer community. The game had over 20,000 LGBTQI+ conversations and had incredible customisation features that could be leveraged. It was the perfect solution to the problem: turning a prominent IRL parade into a virtual celebration. Meet Global Pride Crossing — a virtual Global Pride in Animal Crossing; providing a shared safe space for the queer community to freely gather and express themselves loud and proud.

Describe the execution

We immersed ourselves in the world of Animal Crossing, building a Pride-themed in-game island from scratch that brought many of the signature Pride items and activities within reach of the community. We paved a rainbow brick road to march on, curated a Queer Hall of Fame and designed a Pride-themed clothing collection and much more. We fervently shared our Pride creations on Twitter which had a large and active community for all things ACNH. Our fun-filled island quickly caught on. Players were inspired to organise their very own Pride celebrations in the game using our designs. We also engaged pro-LGBTQI+ gaming creators to help magnify the campaign. Through their live streams, more people got to experience a virtual Pride in some form or another. Our commitment to developing the gaming platform by tapping into existing social behaviours, saw it bring LGBTQI+ and ACNH communities together with resounding approval.

List the results

Global Pride Crossing thrived with $0 media spend. Our campaign hashtag garnered over 25.2 million organic impressions within a fortnight, even Nike used our hashtag for their ACNH Pride apparel collection drop. ACNH islands exploded in a flurry of rainbows with users actively sharing and using our design codes, in turn, they were just as enthusiastic about sharing their own. Our Twitter channel was buzzing with over 93,000 engagements. The gaymer community tuned in to our influencers’ live streams, reaching over 1.07 million minutes watched across Twitch, Facebook and YouTube; that’s 24 months of non-stop Pride celebration packed in less than two weeks. The media fell in love with our idea and further spread our call. The campaign was featured in 89 publications, reaching an estimated 3.86 million readers. Global Pride Crossing kept the Pride flag flying high, making a positive social impact beyond the screens.

Please tell us about the social behaviour that inspired the work

The rise of Fortnite and other online games in the past few years has shown that video games have become first and foremost a place for people to hang out, with friends or even strangers. Games and gaming ecosystems have also started offering more opportunities for players to chat, enjoy concerts and mini-games, create content, and share with the larger community - very much like the ‘traditional’ social networks (i.e. Facebook). The global pandemic has accelerated the need for people to be together in virtual worlds as they could not do so in real life, leading more people to spend time in games. We have seen people use games like Animal Crossing to organise Ramadan dinners, host solemnisations and protests all inside the same game, which all inspired us to create a movement for equality using a virtual world.