9/12 was a one-day, real-time live event that actively engaged users with an interactive story told exclusively through text messages. Each piece of content was designed to put the participant in the shoes of the Verizon employees who were in the days after 9/11, risking their lives in the recovery efforts to reconnect New York. The user interacted with each text as the brand story unfolded, in a new chapter every hour, bringing every native app on the phone into the text thread: YouTube videos, photos, voice memos, Safari, podcasts, AR camera, immersive phone calls and, of course, SMS messages.

On September 11, 2001, the world changed forever. In the aftermath, New York was left devastated and disconnected. With phone lines down, cell service disrupted and Wall Street catastrophically offline, it was chaos and confusion. Verizon’s 140 West Street building—the central telecommunications hub for Lower Manhattan—was badly damaged at Ground Zero. Its restoration became crucial for the comeback of the city as well as the nation. The next day, over 14,000 Verizon employees mobilized, risking their lives to reconnect New York. These stories never made headlines, and were even unknown to many who work at Verizon. So on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, we honored those brave men and women from 2001 with an experience created for Verizon employees by sharing an important and meaningful piece of our company’s history.

It was a story that had never been told in a format that had never been used before: text messages. In 2001, it was the latest way to communicate, and now in 2021 it was the most personal. The 1:1 nature of texting provided us a meaningful nontraditional platform to share the emotional stories that emerged in the days after 9/11. With over 30 Verizon employees from 200 interviewed, a timeline was established. Each text documented a moment, action or story and was delivered at the exact time of day that the events happened on Sept 12, twenty years earlier.

The core of our strategy was to communicate the critical role Verizon played during 9/11 by highlighting how Verizon’s telecommunications headquarters and employees had a profound impact on the recovery and comeback of New York, as well as the nation itself. Project challenges included maintaining focus on the contribution of the employees, and not the brand, to reinforce the importance of a culture centered around “running toward a crisis,” and ensuring all work remained sensitive to the trauma experienced by those who were there. These employees were not assigned the daunting task of reconnecting and repairing service to Manhattan and reconstructing the devastated Verizon headquarters— they wanted to be there, risking their lives to achieve the unimaginable. While the experience was created exclusively for Verizon employees, anyone could participate.

A nontraditional, integrated multimedia MMS platform that used every native app on your phone. This one-day, real-time immersive experience was created for Verizon employees. We invited users to step into the timeline of 9/12, putting them in the shoes of the Verizon employees who sprang into action on September 12 to reconnect New York. Beginning at 8 am on 9/12/21, users were sent hourly texts, including eleven personal stories told through MMS-native content, such as immersive phone calls reenacting historical moments, 360º interactive maps of Downtown Manhattan, AR “before-and-after” filters, YouTube mini-documentaries, voice memos, SMS messages and archival photos . The use of text messages as a media platform was a nod to the tech of 2001, while it also featured the cutting-edge mobile experiences of today—a story about the past told with a modern twist.

Over 300,000 MMSes were sent out on the launch day alone. Mobile messaging became a unique and powerful storytelling tool that connected to users on an intimate level. Our success stemmed from the meaningful brand experience we created for our employees, resulting in a 99.86% engagement rate. As a brand that puts innovation at the forefront of everything we do, we took extreme pride in the creation of an entirely new multimedia MMS platform. Existing phone apps became the springboard for immersive storytelling. Leveraging every native tool within a text conversation, we sent viewers a series of personal, poignant employee stories at the times they actually happened on September 12, 2001. 9/12 pays tribute to the incredible resilience, courage and willpower of the 14,000 Verizon employees who showed up and made a profound impact on our nation’s recovery in the aftermath of 9/11.