2017 has become a historical year, and not always for the right reasons. Many politicians have started supporting intolerance and even hate. People are being encouraged to judge others on their religion, background, sex, age and colour. Our societies are becoming more and more divided and the current political climate is not showing any signs of taking a stand against prejudice.

Our societies are becoming divided and some politicians are encouraging prejudice. As the department store for everybody, HEMA believes that you should love everybody.

For Pride Amsterdam, the festival for equality, the brand created thousands of t-shirts with a random name on it. Each with a heart in front of the name. We put them in unmarked packaging, so people couldn’t tell which name was on the shirt. Ten thousand people bought the shirt, carrying out the message: love everybody. Regardless what their color, age or sexual preference is.

HEMA earned a PR value of 732,000 euros with 0% being negative, good for a 3700% return on advertising spend. On the week of the Pride we sold 10,000 shirts, which meant 1 out of 56 attendees was wearing our shirt that day. The shirts cost 10 euros, resulting in a 100,000 euros donation to the Dutch COC.

The campaign kicked off with a video starring famous Dutch people, influencers in the gay and transgender community and even HEMA’s CEO. These different people shared their ideas about equality and acceptance, all wearing a t-shirt with a random name. We also had a couple of short snippets of the influencers and celebrities talking a bit more about the name on the shirt, wondering where they lived or did as a job. These were shared by the celebrities and influencers on their social channels. Next to that we had a PR push headed a ‘What to wear to Pride’ section in the popular talk show RTL boulevard. The t-shirts went on sale as soon as the first video was released and had the hashtag #?? everybody on the back, making each shirt a walking billboard for social sharing. The proceeds of the sold shirts went to Dutch Gender & Sexuality.