After a two-year hiatus, the triumphant return of San Francisco Pride’s live celebrations became shrouded in controversy.

The reason?

A decision publicly announced prohibiting uniformed and armed police officers from marching in the 2022 SF Pride Parade.

Repercussions from the decision, followed by an onslaught of controversial news and threats targeting the LGTBQ+ community, prompted the resignation of SF Pride’s internal PR team.

This left the Pride committee with an onslaught of unanswered press inquiries and no communications support for one of the country’s largest Pride celebrations – just weeks before its main event. ​

The controversy wiped out fundraising.

Boston’s Pride Group dissolved over a similar situation, effectively canceling their parade.

Our objectives:

Develop and promote an agreement to make everyone happy;

Energize sponsors and donations;

Communicate that this Pride would be fun;

Diffuse any crisis; and

Position SF Pride as a beacon for a weary worldwide LGBTQIA+ community.

We needed a creative solution to bring together the two sides.

One camp thought it was wrong to include uniformed officers after the police brutality exposed by Black Lives Matter.

The other didn’t want to roll back progress between police and the LGBTQIA+ community.

Our idea: create a bridge built on two planks both groups respected: history and research.

We surveyed +1,500 Americans: 25% believed police should be allowed to march; 52% wanted police to wear special t-shirts; 29% wanted police to wear official uniforms.

People wanted police there, but with guardrails.

Our compromise: Uniformed officers would march in a special contingent; officers bound to wear a uniform could do so; other police would wear casual clothes.

We argued this acknowledged Pride’s history and future.

Pride commemorated the 1969 Stonewall riot when LGBTQIA+ people stood up to systemic police harassment.

But it also represented an opportunity to build bridges.

We recommended a joint statement acknowledging Pride’s history, with the aim of bringing the community together. Once police and community organizations reached an agreement, we would pitch the story to local and national outlets to ensure attendees and sponsors knew a compromise had been reached.

A rolling announcement calendar of headliners would help turn the page from the police uniform controversy and focus on building attendance.

We positioned Martha Wash headlining this year’s pride as a pivotal news event. The San Francisco native rose to fame with the song “It’s Raining Men,” which would turn 40 this year.

On June 13th - less than two weeks before the main Pride event - a group of far-right Proud Boys stormed a Drag Queen Story Hour at a nearby library. Since our research showed San Francisco was a right-wing target, we flew in a full crisis communications team on site.

On June 2nd, the San Francisco Chronicle broke the news: “Compromise between S.F. police, Pride Parade allows small number of officers to march in uniform.”

The team secured an opportunity with CNN, which quoted our joint statement: “Pride grew out of conflicts between LGBTQ communities and police at Compton’s Cafeteria and Stonewall Inn. Ever since then, we have attempted to bridge that divide.”

PR secured 173 stories in less than 30 days, turning sentiment around.

PRWeek published a case study, noting: “The firm helped to negotiate a compromise with city police, as well as promoting the event.”

On the finale of Pride, a person sprayed mace right by the main stage. Social media erupted with rumors about gunshots. PR jumped into action with a crisis control command center to get the story under control.

It worked, with the team quickly diffusing the situation through a statement posted to social media.

Over one million attended the event, with +500,000 at the parade.

“We were very alarmed that the future of San Francisco Pride was at stake,” said SF Pride’s Suzanne Ford. “PR was essential in fundraising,”

“Four months before the event, we only had $100,000 committed. In the same amount of time, [PR] helped us on a national level raise $1.9 million.”

PR secured 173 stories in less than 30 days, turning sentiment around with positive articles in local and national press. Media reports shifted from the controversy to focus on the excitement of the event.

More people engaged and shared positive content about SF Pride than last year. Total volume shot up 173%. More than 2,831 unique authors joined the cause, up 36,793% over the previous year. Engagements rose 772%, and impressions skyrocketed to 53,407%, surpassing over 1.1B.

SF Pride asked the PR team to become their first year-round AOR.