To elevate friendship in parents’ eyes, we showed it to them through the eyes of a friend, bringing it front and center at a moment typically reserved for measuring academic success: parent-teacher conferences. Parents came to hear how their child was doing in school, but they didn’t meet with the teacher. Instead, they met with someone who would offer a different perspective—their child’s best friend. For the first time, parents saw success in a new way. Turning a social experiment, into a social conversation about the value of friendship. This led us to create a curriculum dedicated to elevating friendship in the classroom. And in 2018, P.S. 119 became the first school to have a peer-to-peer friendship assessment on their report card, changing how achievement is measured in New York City. We gave the world a new way to look at success, and it started with being a friend.

Parents know that friendship matters, but we wanted them to experience the Magic of Friendship in a way they never had. We partnered with P.S. 119 to pilot a ‘Friendship Curriculum’ program inspired by MLP’s core principles. We first tested it through a social experiment: we invited parents to a parent-teacher conference, but surprised them by having them meet their child’s best friend. Each friend described why their child was so special: the ultimate report card for the parents. We filmed the conferences so we could share the concept socially, which then led us to implement the ‘Friendship Curriculum’ with workbooks that included stories, activities and writing exercises dedicated to elevating friendship in the classroom. We launched a website giving educators everywhere free access to the workbook. And to truly measure success, P.S. 119 became the first school to have a peer-to-peer friendship assessment on their report card.

Both online and directly, we got parents and educators talking about putting friendship on the curriculum. Our goal for the film was 500k views in 2 weeks; we reached over 1 million, 91% of which were women 25-44. This elevated engagement continued for over 30 days (average is 48 hours) and the film became the most organically shared brand content ever on their Facebook page. MLP saw a huge increase in positive sentiment on Facebook (from 58% to 77%). Most comments were moms tagging other moms, imagining what their children would say about each other, and teachers wanting to bring it to their classrooms. The ‘Friendship Curriculum’ program has taken off at P.S. 119, and we’ve been approached by multiple educators to help them implement it at their schools. Walmart asked Hasbro to run a 30-second broadcast version of the film during the “Frozen Christmas special.”