People use hashtags to express themselves. Every year on the International LGBT Pride Day, a lot of hashtags show up: there’s a lot of will to externalize the feeling, but no pattern to amplify this voice. The most popular are: #lgbt #gay #homo #gays #gayfriends #lgbtteens #instagay #instahomo #lgbt #lgbtcommunity #lgbts #samelove #love #loveislove #gayisok #gayisokay #homosexual. Smirnoff has decided to create an icon that could spread the pride in every corner, gathering the biggest symbol of expression on the social networks with another one that’s very important to the LGBT community: their flag. We added six new colors and only two lines, and concentrated all the pride in a unique symbol on social networks. By redesigning the hashtag, we’ve updated the way people spread love.

We launched simple video on Facebook on July 28, inviting people to share their main reason to be proud of on this day. On each answer, we created a customized Pride Tag, for people share on Facebook.We started delivering the post for a small LGBT actvists segment. By doing that, we assured that the first interactions would be positive and relevant to the algorithm. Then we began to expand the target: a look a like cluster of who had engaged with the post. That made us receive more shares than comments.When we opened it for the demographic target, we had so much positive support that we basically created a support community for the LGBT cause. Whenever a negative comment came up, the people who were already engaged with the advertisement would reply and defend both the cause and the brand. In addition, the post’s “quality score” made our investments profitable.

With only one post and 24 hours, we reached 11.1 million people, received 1701 comments and 1,589 shares, in addition to having generated talks and discussions on the topic. Sometimes, the greatest changes in the world come from small things. As small as a hashtag.