United Nations
Inventing a holiday for The United Nations with Pharrell Williams
Task
Pharrell partnered with the UN Foundation to celebrate The United Nations’ first ever International Day of Happiness. As Creative Lead, I brought in Google Creative Lab to help us inspire a global dance party to raise awareness for climate action. The initiative drove supporters to sign the Live Earth Petition, rallying one billion people to demand that world leaders commit to tackling climate change at the Paris Agreement.
Pharrell visited Google for a Q&A with Lynn Hirschberg.
He then spoke to students with climate experts Sylvia Earle and Philippe Cousteau to discuss creating a happy planet through stewardship.
Leading up to the event, we created a microsite asking people around the world to do their “HAPPY DANCE” which we made into a supercut highlighting people from their homes in tiny remote villages to rooftops in Paris and Tokyo.
Result
We generated over 1200 user-generated YouTube HAPPY dance videos from 222 countries, including the US, UK, Canada, Philippines, South Africa, Malaysia, India, Brazil, Germany, and Japan, and raised ~$100k on the day of launch. We received one billion combined impressions of #HappyDay and #HappyPlanet across all platforms.
Through my personal network, I was able to bring in the Empire State Building for a lighting ceremony. The tower was illuminated in yellow at 9pm, the official color of the International Day of Happiness, which is celebrated as an awareness campaign and fundraiser each year on March 20th.
Project Roles:
Creative Lead (pitched, brought in, and connected Empire State Building and Google Creative Labs teams)
Project Management with Robin Frank, our EP
Marketing Strategy and Copywriting
Social Media Strategy