UGC has evolved from ice-bucket challenges into viral dances, social posts, and memes that influence popular culture. However, consumers often take part in a narrative that is built for someone, something, or someplace else and rarely highlights the intricacies of their community.

Generating content for social consumption is about one thing for youth culture. Clout. For clout chasers, winning comes from expressing themselves using everything from current events to memes. Our work placed AT&T at fingertip distance from an audience of Multicultural Millennials, allowing their audience to tell stories about themselves while making AT&T the source of clout.

AT&T was losing relevance amongst Millennials because there was a perception of it being old, corporate, and non-diverse. Inclusivity was a major issue because Millennials are a highly diverse group, with nearly 40% being African-American and Hispanic. This cohort is one with the largest purchasing power in the US, and if AT&T didn’t make inroads, they wouldn’t be a category market leader in the future.

This challenge was most acute in four key markets: NYC, LA, Atlanta, and Chicago. If AT&T could gain trust and win with Multicultural Millennials (MCMs), they’d close the gap between their largest competitor, Verizon. Complicating this challenge was that T-Mobile, the 3rd largest carrier, had distanced themselves from AT&T via Millennial subscribers with nearly a 20% margin through consistent youth messaging.

Based on this, success metrics of the campaign were an increase of brand awareness, relevance, and switching intent with MCMs.

Knowing MCMs feel their interests were underrepresented, we used this to define our creative strategy (making the invisible impossible to ignore), but the media strategy too.

Codes of Culture reclaimed the area code parenthesis they invented in 1947 by reintroducing them in AT&T blue to frame the coveted “Codes” declared by locals - rituals, artifacts, language, and people defining their city.

The campaign commenced with hometown heros from our ethnographies across the entire media mix. By illuminating real faces with the parenthesis in high profile media placements (not actors mimicking it), AT&T created a new verification mark and its media became the stage where the hometown heroes wanted to be recognized. To accelerate participation, we launched a meme generator so MCMs could show out for their code and be featured across major media channels in their city. This cemented the campaign’s authenticity and built trust with MCMs.

While the rest of the wireless category promotes speed and coverage, we built trust with Multicultural Millennials (MCMs) differently. Our UGC approach was groundbreaking because traditional campaigns start with awareness into adoption and finally advocacy. We prioritized adoption first, then awareness. To do so, we took AT&T’s message of “More For Your Thing” and turned it into a real promise that celebrated what specific communities from the (212), (213), (312), and (404) are truly proud of.

We launched a custom meme generator that allowed our audience to celebrate their hometown pride. We then curated the most symbolic user-generated memes and placed them on large-format OOH and geo-targeted social, all while crediting the user's Instagram handle as a form of social currency.

By elevating content made by real locals, we multiplied our earned media by way of the family and friends who also felt compelled to share across their socials.

The campaign was intentionally built to invite MCMs in by providing them the mic to showcase what matters most to their communities. The proverbial mic was the meme generator – a tool that allowed MCMs to upload images that represented the codes of their city through our design language and device.

These produced assets generated by locals would become the foundation of this campaign as they began to populate our entire media mix. From OOH billboards to digital display takeovers to experiential events, over 22K pieces of code content were generated. Throughout 12 months these assets were showcased in high-profile placements, ensuring visibility and representation of MCMs.

By acknowledging these codes, our media moments lived beyond their immediate formats because they became a proven incentive for our audience to share their code and stories on their own channels so they could be elevated and celebrated by AT&T.

The launch of the meme generator accelerated participation and allowed our audience to represent their area code for a chance to be featured on billboards in their hometown. This resulted in over 22K unique pieces distributed across social, OOH, and media, further cementing the campaign’s authenticity.

Our unaided awareness scores with MCMs saw a 350% lift in NYC, 150% lift in LA, 500% lift in CHI, and 280% lift in ATL. By tying the campaign to the rituals, artifacts, language, and people of each code, we also saw an increase in connection with consumers in culturally relevant ways: LA 110% lift, CHI 52% lift, ATL 19% lift, NYC remained static.

However, the biggest success was switching intent. In a category where only 2% of the market moved to a new carrier, top two box scores saw a lift in intent ranging from 37% to as high as 74% among MCMs.