Background / Summary
As with many marginalized groups, the global LGBTQ+ community has been engaged in a long and ongoing struggle for equality. To a large extent, that struggle plays out across a country's laws, rights and cultural landscape. For example, marriage equality, adoption, blood donation, military service rights, even the rules surrounding gender assignment on government documentation – each can have a profound impact on a person's life. And each are governed by specific public policies and laws. This is a lot of data. And navigating it creates ongoing complexity.

From its work as a peer-to-peer not-for-profit supporting the LGBTQ+ community, PFLAG Canada knew that inequalities are both widespread and vary widely depending where you are.

This was a new campaign and initiative for PFLAG Canada.

Marketing Challenge / Objectives
Our brief: draw attention to global LGBTQ+ inequalities – and help the LGBTQ+ community navigate them.

Objectives:
Shine a light on global inequalities.
Engage global LGBTQ+ travellers.
Bring scale to PFLAG Canada's mandate.

Strategy - "The Big Idea"
The sheer volume and decentralized nature of global legal data on LGBTQ+ issues is a barrier to access and, fundamentally, a barrier to progress. We can’t change what we can’t see.

So, we created DestinationPride.org – a data-driven search platform that reimagines the Pride flag as a dynamic bar graph, then uses it to visualize the world’s LGBTQ+ laws, rights and social sentiment.

Target audience:
Primary: LGBTQ+ travellers and their allies.
Secondary: Global activists who can use these visualizations as levers for change.
Tertiary: Global partners with a vision for equality.

We started by identifying six key areas of focus: marriage equality, sexual activity law, gender identity protections, anti-discrimination laws, civil rights and liberties, and social media sentiment.

Our algorithm gathers the country-, state- and city-level laws that govern those areas from the LGBTQ+ knowledge base Equaldex. Next, it validates and gap-fills with data from Wikipedia. Finally, it pulls real-time social media sentiment from the social analytics tool Netbase. Each bar is assigned a value, then averaged to an overall numerical score.

Global platform. Global launch.
To launch Destination Pride globally, we created more than 100 geographically individualized Facebook Ad campaigns targeting people who were interested in LGBTQ+ topics, groups and events, and who showed interest in travel. Ads ran in local languages, and were contextual to local news events, such as the cancellation of the Pride parade in Uganda.

Creative and Execution

The idea:
The Pride flag reimagined as a dynamic data visualization measuring global LGBTQ+ laws, rights and social sentiment.

Design story:
At the height of the American LGBTQ+ community's first big fights for acceptance, the designer Gilbert Baker created the Pride flag. Since then, this flag has become a powerful symbol of acceptance around the world. Destination Pride builds on the visual identity and meaning of this flag - but updates it to provide deeper insights and utility into the degrees of acceptance the community may find.

Data visualization:
At the heart of this project is a dynamic data visualization. Each bar of the flag becomes the bar of a bar chart, each measuring a different aspect of LGBTQ+ acceptance.

Dynamic Design:
Since laws and cultures are always changing, our design can change in real time – as laws are passed or struck down, or as social media activity trends positive or negative. Even the simple act of sharing a flag creates a social data point that our algorithm will measure on aggregate.

Simple First:
Our design favours simplicity and accessibility. We want users to have a quick and emotional reaction to the work. "What!? I thought San Francisco would be higher."

We supported our January 15, 2018 launch with PR and a global ad campaign that included more than 100 unique Facebook campaigns, running in 92 countries and 46 languages. Each targeted local LGBTQ+ communities and contained unique creative – and contextual messaging based on region-specific insights.

 Results
• Users from 156 of the world’s 195 countries
• +85,000 destinations searched and flags generated
•  +135 pieces of media coverage, including Fast Company, Huffington Post, Lifehacker, ad trades and LGBTQ+ publications from Brazil to Norway to Japan.
• 1.26-million estimated coverage views
• 1,226% increase in social mentions of PFLAG Canada during campaign period
• PFLAG Canada is a grassroots not-for-profit that's created a utility with global application and impact.
• Conversation activation across tourism offices (including New Zealand and Vancouver), politicians (Alberta MPP, Sandra Jansen) and celebrities (Tegan and Sara).
• All contributing to Destination Pride being the most shared and discussed communication platform in PFLAG's 45-year history.
• Our Pride flag visualizations have been included in the London Design Museum's retrospective on graphic design and political messaging. The show, called, "Hope to Nope: Graphics and Politics 2008-18" runs until August 12, 2018.