In early 2014, Visa wanted to unveil their new brand platform “Everywhere you want to be” in a big way. Their ambitious goal was to evolve the brand by encouraging ALL their stakeholders to define and own a definition of “everywhere” in every aspect of their lives.

For consumers, that would mean a high-profile launch during the Sochi Olympic games.

But for their employees, they needed something more. Something that would help them embrace and share the new message. Something that signaled more than just a new marketing initiative, but a new day at Visa.

So we created the internal “Selfie” campaign to acknowledge employees as true stakeholders, launching it first to managers and business leaders at a leadership offsite, then to global employees through a worldwide webcast.

An innovative “selfie poster” concept gave every employee a way to define his/her unique “everywhere” through a custom digital tool that created posters for printing and sharing across social networks. Key business leaders at Visa created posters first, serving as examples for employees to follow.

A video contest, “Lights, Camera, Everywhere,” would follow, inviting employees to create, share and vote on short “everywhere” videos. Top-rated videos would be featured at a live film festival, and on the company website, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and Facebook.

By engaging employees first, and creating a social sharing opportunity, Visa ensured they would experience the new platform as more than just marketing buzzwords, but as a new definition of their roles within Visa, and as brand ambassadors.

In discussing what “not corporate” meant to Visa, we were told that the activation should be “scrappy, you know, like a selfie.” That idea became the centerpiece of our execution – an easy, fun, technology-fueled way for employees to share a selfie photo overlaid with his/her own one-sentence “everywhere.”

From there, we designed two phases:

• Phase I – Scrappy Selfie Posters: A custom-built online tool enabling every global employee to easily upload a selfie, type in his/her “everywhere,” and add a poster to an online gallery or share on social networks.

• Phase II – Employee Film Festival: inviting every employee to submit 60-second videos of his/her “everywhere.” Posted online, videos would be viewed and voted on by employees. The top 25 videos would be exhibited in a live film festival for family and friends, with the top five exhibited on visa.com, LinkedIn, and the company’s social media sites.

Visa employees and our client were equally delighted by the innovative online tool, and how easy and fun it was to create and share posters. More than 350 employees created and shared their “everywhere” across their social networks.

Such innovation at the employee engagement level was completely new for Visa, and was well-received and recognized as such by employees. A strong answer to the CEO’s vision of signaling a new day at Visa, this internal “everywhere” launch was hailed as a great success, clearly helping to set both a new internal tone and the beginning of a new way of working at Visa.