The strategy (below) and campaign structure led to a simple, two-stage creative idea. We would highlight the shocking abuse that the LGBT+ community face on a daily basis in London. Guerrilla fly posters featuring stories of hate crime were posted in the place where the hate happened, and we took over WIFI hotspots and geolocated taxi tops to spread the message further. Genuine tales of love and acceptance were brought to life by over 30 top illustrators and spread all over the city. TV adverts told true stories of people who had rejected their LGBT+ loved ones and regretted it ever since, inspiring people to reconcile and reunite. We created the world’s first love powered billboard and launched events at the Tate and the Science Museum. Our message was embraced across the city and was even mentioned in parliament by Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May.

The two-stage creative idea took place in the two weeks leading up to the 2017 Pride in London parade. In the hate phase, we used shocking stories of abuse the community had faced to show that ‘Hate Happened Here’. Displaying these stories in boroughs where they happened made them much harder to ignore; hammering home the fact it happened on the streets where Londoners live, work and play every day. We then flipped this, using real, geo-located stories of love from the community and our straight allies, proving that ‘Love Happens Here’. Our choice of media enabled us to show this reveal through fly-posters and DOOH. And this reveal deliberately showed the seams: plastering directly over the hate; or, in digital formats, flickering from one to the other. We’d make a virtue of the change – showing love overcoming hate.

Our aim for this campaign was to expose the hate to all Londoners and then bring everyone into our message of LGBT+ love. As a volunteer organisation, Pride doesn’t have the budget to pay for brand tracking to show attitudinal shift. However, intermediate measures suggest we were successful. Discussions of Pride in London achieved over 670m unique impressions, compared with 368m last year, indicating that our more inclusive and universal approach for 2017 drew a far larger audience into the conversation. For the hashtag #LoveHappensHere specifically, we achieved over 91,000 individual mentions - over three times that achieved in 2016 – and generated 244m unique impressions - a significant increase on the 86m reached in 2016. At the peak of mentions, during the Parade, the hashtag was used three times every second. With this campaign, we held hate to account and showed beyond doubt that, in London, Love Happens Here.