Situation

Design a comprehensive campaign to bring our users along in our IPO process.

Brief

Reddit is the heart of the internet where people discover and participate through real conversation. Our heart is our community and we arrived at this monumental day because of them. How do you invite hundreds of millions of active users in 100,000 active communities to an IPO?

Objectives

Reddit is Real. Keep it authentic, not corporate. We don’t want anything too shiny or perfect.

Remember the human. Our users are why we are here. Acknowledge their role in shaping Reddit without being patronizing.

Respect the retail investor and embrace them as we would the institutional investor.

We executed a suite of creative and strategic business decisions:

- S-1 Community Letter: Wrote a letter to our community in our S-1 regulatory filing.

- Users as Owners: Offered a Directed Share Program so users could buy shares at the IPO price, just like institutional investors.

- r/RDDT: Launched a subreddit to share investor news and updates with our community.

- Pledge 1%: Reserved 1% of our Class A common stock to fund community initiatives.

- AM(A)A: Hosted an “Ask Me (Almost) Anything” (AMAA) on r/RDDT.

- Investor Roadshow Video: Produced Reddit’s pitch video for investors and analysts.

- Environmental Design: Blanketed the NYSE with Snoo.

- Social Video: Produced “day in the life” social video of Snoo getting ready for the NYSE.

- Earnings Calls: Announced plans to take questions from the community for our quarterly earnings calls, typically reserved for analysts.

We knew some of our communities were skeptical about Reddit's IPO. We committed to being transparent with our users and let that company value drive our engagement strategy despite potential critiques.

Through early alignment internally, we decided to offer users the opportunity to be owners of Reddit stock, and make Snoo (our alien mascot that represents the “everyperson” nature of Reddit) the face of the moment, not company executives. This was a first in the history of the New York Stock Exchange.

Due to a regulatory quiet period ahead of IPOs, we were limited where and when we could speak to our community. We had to be creative about ways we could show up genuinely within the legal confines. Also, this would have to be a home-grown campaign. Our internal teams - including Communications, Community and our creative team, OrangeRed - drove the strategy and execution.

Our overall strategy of community transparency and focusing on Snoo as the face of our IPO achieved its desired outcome of focusing attention on the brand, business and community. Media outlets across the globe reproduced the image of Snoo ringing the bell and our employees shared the video and Snoo GIFs to commemorate the moment on social media. We saw over 500+ pieces of global press coverage stemming from the IPO.

While user reception on Reddit was mixed, we saw a successful uptake of our key strategies:

- Users participated in the Directed Share Program and interest and engagement penetrated the media and on platform discussion.

- Thoughtful, balanced user questions on our AM(A)A post and video.

- Isolated critique of Reddit’s IPO amongst select communities, with some sentiment shifting more positive especially as Reddit’s stock price grew in the days following the IPO.