The campaign was developed to launch Unilever’s sustainable living platform: Project Sunlight. It was designed to appeal to people everywhere, in particular parents, encouraging them to commit to more sustainable behaviors by showing a more optimistic and brighter future.

We aimed at those who cannot avoid the issue: expectant parents. The central piece of the campaign is a pre natal film that was broadcast across 5 countries. We turned a boring and informative video into a surprising and inspiring tool to communicate our cause. Parents’ genuine reactions were captured in the process and turned into an online film directed to all audiences. The film premiered globally and drove consumers’ attention to projectsunlight.com.

The creative plan was combined with a strong PR strategy based on a 24hr launch celebration built around Universal Children’s Day, starting at sunrise in Indonesia and culminating at sundown in the US. The launch was made through Unilever owned social channels. It engaged employees, key opinion formers and locally-sourced celebrity ambassadors, including Fergie, Robbie Williams and Shahrukh Khan. We worked with every Unilever brand to develop bespoke social content and to show gratitude to consumer participation. We released a global study -‘How Children Inspire Sustainable Living’- and most importantly, positively impacted on 2 million additional children through our Foundation Partners: The World Food Programme, Save the Children and UNICEF. During the first month of launch, we provided real-time analytics from a 24/7 ‘command centre’ news room and rolled out additional communication pieces following consumers’ conversations.

Launch program details:

- A 24hr launch built around Universal Children’s Day starting at sunrise in Indonesia and culminating at sundown in the US.

- Released a global study, ‘How Children Inspire Sustainable Living’, executed by Berland, posing questions to 4,000 parents and 4,000 children. This study, together with focus groups, revealed that children are the catalysts to inspiring adults to adopt greener lifestyles.

- Launched through Unilever owned social channels and drove to scale views of the ‘Why Bring a Child into This World?’ film.

- Engaged employees, key opinion formers and celebrity ambassadors, including Fergie, Robbie Williams and Shahrukh Khan.

- Worked with Unilever brands to develop bespoke social content that celebrated launch and thanked consumers who created ‘Acts of Sunlight’.

- Provided real-time analytics from a 24/7 ‘command center’ news room and rolled out additional content following the launch in a real-time publishing model during the first month.

The launch of Project Sunlight exceeded all campaign metrics and landed Unilever’s point-of-view while generating positive sentiment and engaging consumers to act.

The prenatal group experience garnered top-tier media results across launch markets and in business and consumer media including: Times of India, USA Today, The Guardian, BuzzFeed, The Wall Street Journal and Ellen TV.

• Video views: 70 million (vs. target of 50 million)

• Web hub visits: 2.7 million (vs. target of 500,000)

• Campaign Conversations: 85,000 (vs. target of 40,000)

• Earned media impressions: 1.2 billion

• Facebook and Google impressions: 1.1 billion

• Engagement rate: 4.2% (vs. target of 3.78%)