On June 26, 2013, we launched #ProudToLove, the first-ever YouTube PR campaign celebrating Pride month and the LGBT community. The campaign did not have any paid media, so we relied entirely on PR and social buzz to spread its message.

#ProudToLove highlighted the universal values of love, pride, and equality and emphasized the ways in which YouTube has empowered and elevated LGBT issues. We promoted the campaign with a special YouTube Pride logo, Google.com homepage promotion, a PR launch event at the YouTube Space Los Angeles, a YouTube Broadcast e-mail to millions of subscribers, and a two-day takeover of the YouTube Spotlight Channel, featuring a #ProudToLove video (2.9M+ views, record engagement, first Google video to make it onto YouTube’s monthly Ads Leaderboard) and ten Pride-themed playlists.

In total, our top 20 featured LGBT-themed channels saw a 107% uplift in daily subscriptions during the campaign. The campaign drove 150+ press hits, 40K+ Twitter mentions, and social media posts from 50+ influencers like Macklemore, Neil Patrick Harris, Dan Savage, George Takei, and Cher.

We inspired a viral movement from 25K+ people creating videos about what or who they’re #ProudToLove. Our work received positive press coverage and was applauded by top LGBT advocacy and community organizations, including the Human Rights Campaign, American Federation for Equal Rights, GLAAD, and The Trevor Project. The campaign exceeded our initial campaign objectives and set a strong foundation for YouTube to maintain its position as the #1 best perceived brand by the LGBT community (YouGov BrandIndex, US).

The PR execution was fluid and agile as pitches were constantly adapted to incorporate progress around the Supreme Court decision. From June 20th through the 26th, we pitched the #ProudToLove campaign video and YouTube’s biggest LGBT creators under embargo and primed Googlers to participate in #ProudToLove.

Our company-wide story about the campaign went live on Wednesday, the 26th - the same day as the Supreme Court's decision around marriage equality. While we planned to go live with the campaign on the 28th, we decided to accelerate our launch date by a day, which gave the decision a press cycle before complementing coverage with our timely campaign.

We published our blog post and made our press push on the 27th and saw press respond strongly with 150+ hits in outlets ranging from USA Today, the LA Times, and Buzzfeed to LGBT outlets including Huffington Post Gay Voices, TowleRoad, and Queerty.

25K+ people tagged videos #ProudToLove following our CTA

40K mentions on Twitter in five days

#ProudToLove tweets averaged 452 RTs/tweet, performing 2x baseline average

Hero video retweeted 1,220+ times, placing it in our top 15 most shared tweets of 2013

50+ influencers (people/brands with 100K+ followers) supported campaign, tweeting #ProudToLove

Comment analysis indicates that only 1% of #ProudToLove tweets contained negative sentiment, a result of proactive community management

The social message inspired our audience. We saw many tweets like: "@lia_fabbri: I’ve decided I’m gonna use the #ProudToLove campaign to come out to my family. So like, that’s a thing. #NervousButExcited"