Verizon is America’s most reliable network. Our marketing challenge was to show up during Pride Month in a way that felt authentic. Not by adding a rainbow flag corporate logo to our Facebook page, but using the Verizon network to genuinely help the LGBTQ+ community.

Coming out to family and friends is one of the most nerve-wracking moments in the lives of LGBTQ+ people. Many LGBTQ+ youth feel safer calling. Although some of these calls go well, many people are met with rejection and it can be the last time they ever speak to family.

As a company built on connecting people, Verizon set out to inspire thousands of families to reconnect.

We reached out to Verizon’s long-term partner, PFLAG — the nation’s first and largest organization founded to unite LGBTQ+ families — then counselled four families struggling with acceptance and encouraged them to call back and try again.

The result is the four-minute film ‘Love Calls Back’ that tells the true coming out stories of four LGBTQ+ people and captures the moment their family pick up the phone and try again.

We launched online across Twitter, Facebook and IG on June 6 — simultaneously our articles appeared in key LGBQT+ publications like PopSugar. On June 9, our 60 second edit aired on CBS TV during the Tony Awards — an iconic LGBTQ+ event. This was followed up by spots airing during the Women’s World Cup and two Pride/Stonewall documentaries on MSNBC and CNN, which brought our total impressions to 1.535B during the month of June.

Verizon has over 100 million customers in the United States, which means taking a stand on any issue can alienate customers. Verizon received a wave of hate for its 2018 Pride work —thousands of customers threatened to leave Verizon. Verizon understood these risks and chose to launch Love Calls Back all over social and television anyway — taking a public stand for its support of LGBTQ+ community.

We launched across Twitter, IG and Facebook on June 5 — kicking off the start of Pride Month. We worked with PFLAG to leverage their influencer talent — like documentary filmmaker Lee Hirsch, Executive Director of LGBTQ+ youth organization one.n.ten Nate Rhoton, Nick Carter, AJ McLean, Luis Gerardo Mendez, George Takei and others — this help spread the film into key LGBTQ plublications like PopSugar. The campaign ran throughout June’s Pride Month. A :60 spot aired during the heart of the Tony Awards on June 9th and saw an impressive 939M impressions. This was followed up by spots airing during the Women’s World Cup and two Pride/Stonewall documentaries on MSNBC and CNN, which brought our total impressions to 1.535B during the month of June.

Our partner PFLAG — the nation’s largest organization founded to unite LGBTQ+ families — was inundated with emails and calls for help from families inspired by our film. In total, we inspired over 69,000 families to reach out to PFLAG and start their own journey of reconciliation. In total, there was a 55% increase in donations to PFLAG help centers during the campaign — allowing the organization to expand its resources into several more communities.

The campaign was covered in 191 articles including a Los Angeles Times report on the documentary and an interview with the director of the film, Lee Hirsch. One of the women we reconnected with her mom also wrote an amazing piece in O Magazine. Overall, “Love Calls Back” had 65M digital impressions, 401K social engagements and 35.1K digital clicks.