Four months into 2020, over 400 Pride celebrations worldwide had been canceled. This not only stripped the LGBTQIA+ community of safe outlets to celebrate their queer identity, but also left the community fragmented. Our main objective for Pride 2020 was to create a safe space for the community and allies to gather, recharge and spread joy - allowing us to celebrate our proudest, queerest selves.

We aimed to create programming throughout Pride Month, spanning a cross-country audience, and gathering a community that surpassed Human By Orientation’s in-person Pride event from 2019 (+2K attendees) - all under a budget of $700K.

We sought to launch HBO’s first-ever digital Pride celebration on HumanByOrientation.com with a myriad of queer programming that featured HBO talent and LGBTQIA+ entertainers -- and allow our audience to experience this content together through an interactive community functionality built into the handmade website.

The site would aim to act as a destination for the queer community to safely, freely, and fully celebrate Pride, while driving Human By Orientation brand affinity across the audience. We’d pull this off through a range of events, leveraging HBO LGBTQIA+ programs and prominent entertainers across queer culture - all presented through a relatable brand voice to authentically engage the community.

With in-person events canceled, consumers were jumping to virtual experiences (like Zoom parties, Instagram Lives, etc.). However, a couple months into stay-at-home orders, virtual fatigue was starting to kick in. We were challenged with creating an event during a time when in-person gatherings were unsafe and consumer sentiment regarding virtual events was rapidly evolving.

After studying hours of virtual streams and programming, we often left feeling isolated and lacking the sense of community we long for in these experiences. Our strategy was to create an immersive virtual experience with interactive features that established a strong sense of community. Building a custom website allowed us to provide the consumer with a premium, multi-layered experience suitable for Pride.

The HumanByOrientation.com site hosted daily virtual events from Thursday, June 18 through Sunday, June 28, 2020. Our 11-day schedule incorporated programming for the entire spectrum of the LGBTQIA+ community, including musical headliners, drag brunch, underground DJ sets, queer comedy night and more - all free to attend. Headliners included Janelle Monáe, Kim Petras, and Todrick Hall.

Our site included an interactive community feature - allowing consumers to create a profile and sync their Instagram account to connect or chat with other attendees. Once logged in, consumers could RSVP for any and all events - with the option to save events in their calendar, sign up for reminders, and share event invites with friends and family. When a program went live, consumers would receive a notification to enter the site, where they just had to click a button to watch the event live in real time.

Our Pride campaign generated 148 unique press pickups, with a staggering 1.37 billion impressions. We created 372 unique pieces of content, culminating in over 16 hours of entertainment. In the end, our site garnered over 40,000 unique visits from 113 countries. We aimed for a nationwide audience and ended up engaging an international one. While we didn’t release programming during the first 2 weekends of Pride Month (in solidarity with the BLM protests), instead we launched 11 consecutive days of content to consistently engage our audience through the end of Pride month. We exceeded our expectations by creating 1 global community during an unprecedented moment of culture, allowing LGBTQIA+ people all over the world to gather, recharge, and celebrate their proudest, queerest selves.