At its best, an experience is not just about press coverage, it’s about creating moments that fit a moment in time, that leave us talking and change the world. Verizon’s partnership with the United Nations to join the Global Compact and debut the first ever brand-funded content in the UN General Assembly as an immersive AR experience to open the Climate Action Summit did just that. The PR work helped the summit generate a massive 16,000 media hits against 26 billion impressions globally, and drove social mentions 1000% higher year over year.

Verizon wanted to make an impact, and a big one in climate. That was the brief – a blank slate where we were asked to find “the moment” and big idea that could change the narrative. Our blank slate did not come with a blank check, and our objectives were clear: at a time when everyone was talking about climate in September 2019, we needed to stand out, and we also had to find something that could be executed within six months—all while delivering real change, not just a stunt.

From the beginning, we made two key decisions: in order to stand out, we’d have to do something that had never been done before, and we’d have to find the planet’s biggest partners. So, we turned to the United Nations, and entered negotiations with our close relationships to find their pain points around climate change. The UN identified their need to reframe how global leaders saw climate change at the upcoming Climate Action Summit, and we saw our opportunity. We proposed, and executed, a first-ever official brand-funded partnership with the United Nations, and debuted the first piece of AR immersive content and the first brand-funded content ever to appear in the UN General Assembly. Our audience was the globe, and to meet them, we sourced the globe’s biggest organization, and created something that would stop all 183 world leaders—and their countries—in their tracks with a stunning experience.

Our first audience was the United Nations itself—an organization that wanted a big creative idea, but didn’t know what to do with it or how to make it happen. We needed to satisfy the most stringent regulations and requirements of the United Nations and also convince them to ingest and give credit to a corporation in the General Assembly for the first time. We did so through careful diplomatic negotiations that met them in their most critical pain points, balancing stakeholders against each other, and using different parties as leverage to drive the ultimate result. Then, having succeeded there, we turned to our primary audience: world leaders and their citizens. We needed a piece of creative that would be awe-inspiring enough to move a jaded body of world leaders to real change. We focused on in AR and immersive experience that would suspend reality.

We had fewer than three months from conceptualization to execution. That meant we had to concurrently build our experience without even knowing if it could happen, as authorization took a parallel path of diplomatic negotiation. Creating the content required unlimited global clearances from a limited list of approved UN sources, as well as writers, directors, producers, and cinematographers working under strict UN rules for content. Even the mere mention of the word “Verizon” as a credit in the UN was a first-ever moment. Production required projection mapping the General Assembly—not built for the concept—as well as coding the AR and immersive experience. Even the equipment had to be disassembled outside, passed through the planet’s toughest security, and re-assembled. And on top of it all, we weren’t allowed to tell anyone in advance – no pitching, no releases, no planning. Our press and amplification had to happen in real time.

Our first-ever brand activation at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit for Verizon drove tangible results across earned and social media. The activation itself led to a half million dedicated organic social posts, 491 million dedicated earned media impressions, and a reach of more than 7.4 billion impressions across all channels. But our success didn’t stop there. The Verizon activation fueled a global conversation, with our creative included in more than 16,000 total media hits across the globe, generating 26 billion impressions, and an additional two million social posts generating over 8 billion impressions. Year over year, the Summit’s reach increased 147% in earned media and over 900% in social mentions and 400% in volume of social impressions. Most importantly, Verizon earned its spot as the first-ever brand partnership in the UN General Assembly while also signing the Global Compact to fight climate change.