Pride campaigns have become increasingly commonplace during the month of June. Being a queer marketer, I’ve had a hard time articulating how I feel about the commercialization of Pride. It feels confusing, frustrating, and painful.

As a marketer, I understand how seasonal content is essential to cut through today’s noisy media landscape with relevant messages. I also respect that many marketers—of all experiences and identities—are seizing opportunities like Pride month and Juneteenth to use their platform for good.

As a queer person, I know how hard-earned pride is. I’ve felt the sting of rejection on the playground, walking around the block, and at my own wedding. I’ve been spat on, threatened at knifepoint, and had rainbow flags burned outside my apartment. And, along the way, I’ve found a profound sense of self, community, and pride.

Seeing a billboard about two men sharing a checking account does not, however, make me feel that same sense of pride. And every time a company rainbow washes their logo on LinkedIn, I find myself careening between anger and appreciation.

So, this year, I’m channeling my conflicted feelings into this quick resource for fellow well-intentioned marketers. Below, I’ll cover:

• Pride campaigns: dos and don’ts
• Ideas for Pride campaigns
• Examples of Pride campaigns

I can only offer one perspective, but I hope it proves helpful as you figure out the most responsible way for your brand to engage with Pride month. Check out this guide from LinkedIn for additional viewpoints.

Pride campaigns: dos and don’ts

Who should create Pride campaigns

Do: Let LGBTQ+ voices lead the way.

It’s natural that a corporate Pride campaign would begin with your marketing team. After all; who else can tell a story like a marketer can? Just because your marketers are good at content creation, though, doesn’t mean they are qualified to speak about LGBTQ+ topics. Make space for LGBTQ+ voices on your team to lead the way in campaign brainstorming, creative direction, and execution.

Some of you might have read that and immediately thought of a few folks you could invite into the process. If you did, great! Just keep in mind that most people don’t want to be singled out at work for being queer. (They certainly don’t want to get extra tasks for it, either.) If this person has not come out to you explicitly, you might also put yourself in the awkward position of making an inaccurate assumption or outing somebody at work. Instead of asking a queer person to help, put out a general call inviting all employees—particularly those who identify as belonging to the LGBTQ+ community—to partner with your marketing team on Pride content.

Don’t: Rely on assumptions, second-hand experiences, and what you’ve heard.

It’s unreasonable to expect people who are straight and cisgendered to profoundly understand LGBTQ+ experiences. If you don’t have people with real lived experiences guiding your Pride campaigns—or any DEI-related content—you run the risk of putting out content that does more harm than good.

If you can’t find any queer folks at your office to contribute to your Pride campaigns, ask yourself why. Making your workplace more inclusive is probably a better use of your time than trodding over Pride month with your own agenda.

Using the Pride flag

Do: Use the Pride flag to create safe spaces.

The rainbow flag has gone mainstream as one of the most recognizable symbols of Pride month.

The Pride flag can be used by LGBTQ+ people as a sign of pride, community, and resistance. As a queer person, when I see the flag in public, it tells me that I will (A) find community there, or (B) be safe from physical assault—a reassurance I sorely need.

Allies who are flying the Pride flag should think about it in terms of creating a safe space. If you’re going to display it where it’s easy—like on your company’s LinkedIn profile—you should also display it where it’s difficult. What would happen if you used a rainbow-fied logo on your corporate invoices, or in presentations to your board of directors? Or, what would happen if you hung a Pride flag in the company office? Showing the flag where it is least welcome is an impactful way to transform unsafe spaces into safe ones.

Don’t: Co-opt the flag to signal diversity and inclusion.

I’ve seen a worrying trend of Pride campaigns using rainbow colors during Pride month to virtue signal diversity. The Pride flag does not represent diversity.

The colors of the original pride flag represented life, healing, the sun, nature, harmony, the soul, sexuality, and art . The new pride flag includes black, brown, and pink/white/blue, representing the foundational contributions made by black, brown, and trans people to LGBTQ+ advancement.

When you use the rainbow colors to say “hey, we’re inclusive,” you’re co-opting an already meaningful symbol to advance your own interests.

Themes for Pride campaigns

Do: Acknowledge themes of personhood, community, resilience, and activism.

LGBTQ+ lives are about a lot more than dating and marriage. We have work lives, financial lives, and social lives, too. We suffer disproportionately from homelessness, violence,  and addiction.

Pride is a concept that goes beyond politics like equal marriage rights. Just take a look at the original Pride flag colors, and what they represented!

Pride campaigns that transcend surface-level topics and encourage a deeper conversation about self and solidarity are, in my eyes, the only ones worth producing.

Don’t: Make it about “loving who you love.”

I am married to somebody of the same sex. I grew up in a social environment where my right to marriage was debated openly in my classrooms, newspapers, on TV, and everywhere in between. As a result, I deeply appreciate the continuous activism necessary to defend marriage as a human right.

However, I’m tired of people and brands only speaking to me about who I love. It feels like a pinched-nose way of handling (and sanitizing) my life. I feel invisible as the other parts of my queer identity get shrunken by silence. It feels like I’m only worthy of dignity and respect if I fit my life into a heterosexual model of relationships, rather than being worthy of those things simply because I’m a human.

Creating content for Pride campaigns

Do: Support and amplify LGBTQ+ voices.

As with any seasonal campaigns, Pride month can sneak up on your average marketer. So, if you need to create content quickly, look to LGBTQ+ artists as a resource! While they are often underrepresented in professional circles, queer artists are abundantly available for hire to create authentic, meaningful, and impactful content on Pride themes.

Don’t: Rip off queer artists.

As with any artist or content creator you engage; be sure to pay them fairly for their work and/or intellectual property. It is inappropriate to offer mentions and exposure alone, unless the creator suggests it themselves.

It can be tempting—particularly on social channels—to find existing content you can re-share and repurpose. Directly asking the creators for permission to re-share the post on your social channels is a good practice to follow. When you do share content, make sure you re-share the post from the original creator rather than uploading it as a new post.

Even when you are creating content yourself, it’s important to think critically about where your ideas came from. LGBTQ+ people have been ripped off for decades, for everything from fashion to music palettes. Instead, try to remember where you’re pulling inspiration, and offer credit and payment where possible.

Ideas for Pride campaigns

Pride All Year

If you’re still scrambling to come up with ideas for your Pride campaign, consider celebrating Pride year-round.

Invite your teammates—of all identities—to share stories related to LGBTQ+ Pride, and slowly develop content around those stories. You can release a series of videos, graphics, and even podcasts throughout the year at your own pace. And, you can emphasize the point that queer people should be celebrated year-round.

Support LGBTQ+ nonprofits

If you have a large budget for seasonal campaigns, consider redirecting those resources toward nonprofits that serve LGBTQ+ communities. Don’t fuss about publicizing your gift—just give. Prioritize organizations that provide direct aid to LGBTQ+ communities that sit at intersections of injustice (racial, economic, legal, etc.):

• SAGE: a national advocacy and services organization that’s been looking out for LGBTQ+ elders since 1978
• The Okra Project: a collective that seeks to address the global crisis faced by Black Trans people by bringing home cooked, healthy, and culturally specific meals and resources
• For the Gworls: a Black, trans-led collective that curates parties to fundraise money to help Black transgender people pay for their rent, gender-affirming surgeries, smaller co-pays for medicines/doctor’s visits, and travel assistance
• Marsha P. Johnson Institute: protects and defends the human rights of BLACK transgender people
• The Trevor Project: the world’s largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ young people
• LGBTQ Freedom Fund: pays bail to secure the safety and liberty of individuals in jail and immigration detention
• National Center for Transgender Equality: advocates to change policies and society to increase understanding and acceptance of transgender people

An employee donation drive is another great way to honor Pride month by supporting non-profits. Get the word out with engaging videos, like the one below!

If you’re a Vyond customer, you can customize this video template in Vyond Studio.

Customize this video template

Do the Work

Certainly, Pride campaigns are hard to get right. After reading this far in the guide, you might be feeling worried about not having the right ideas, the right creative, or the right people behind your Pride campaign.

That is okay. And, that might be a sign to rethink your approach. Instead of creating a public-facing Pride campaign, consider an internally-focused one.

Think critically about what resources and perspectives are missing to make it so your brand can speak to LGBTQ+ topics. Is it a matter of resistance from executive management? Are you having trouble finding LGBTQ+ voices who can contribute to your campaign? Do you find yourself stammering over your words, unsure of the right language to use?

Unpack those challenges and greet them as opportunities to make your organization even more inclusive and diverse. An easy way to start is to create training resources like the video below to help educate your employees on LGBTQ+ topics. You can also partner with HR on internal marketing campaigns and employer branding to foster inclusion, diversity, and belonging.

The gender pronouns training video above can be customized by any Vyond customer.

Customize this training video

Examples of Pride campaigns

Levi’s: Respect All Pronouns (2021)

A San Francisco-born company, Levi’s is a leader when it comes to Pride campaigns. They haven’t waited for messages to be popular before amplifying them in major activations and advertisements.

For example, Levi’s met popular debate about gender and pronouns head-on last year. Their Respect All Pronouns campaign advocated for people who are gender non-conforming. The campaign features paid models who represent LGBTQ+ communities, highlighting how marketers can amplify and support queer folks.

Compared to other clothing brands, Levi’s does a great job of creating Pride apparel that centers the wearer, and creating apparel in collaboration with queer artists.

ADP: Pride training resources

My all-time favorite Pride campaign isn’t a campaign at all. ADP has, for quite some time now, committed to honoring Pride year-round.

Instead of creating splashy ads, ADP puts in the work to meaningfully advance LGBTQ+ topics at work. By creating a series of training videos with Vyond, they can educate employees on topics like gender pronouns to foster a more inclusive workplace for all.

Skittles: Give the Rainbow (2021)

In June 2021—just as rainbow products began hitting shelves—a particularly memorable rainbow disappeared. In honor of Pride, Skittles actually replaced its iconic multicolored packaging with a grayscale version, making the call that “only one rainbow matters during Pride month.”

While the move felt a little silly and trivial, it stands out as a remarkable example of resisting the impulse to center Pride around your product. This noticeable tactic called into question the commercialization of Pride. Rather than co-opting the Pride flag, Skittles honored that it belongs to the LGBTQ+ community.

Get ready for Pride month

Pride campaigns can feel like an important moment for your brand to raise its voice. It can also feel particularly daunting to well-intentioned marketers who want to get it right. The best way to get started is to share personal experiences, much like I’ve attempted to do in this guide. Invite your team to share stories about LGBTQ+ pride using tools like Vyond Studio.

Are you a non-profit organization dedicated to LGBTQ+ communities? I’d love to hear from you. Reach out to press@vyond.com to connect with our team about amplifying your work year-round.

Contact our team

The post A marketer’s guide to Pride campaigns appeared first on Vyond.

On Wed. March 31, 2021 at 12:45 PM Eastern, we’ll be presenting updated findings on the new normal for workplace communications. Join us at PRWeek Convene: Employee Engagement, to be among the first to hear how the first year of the pandemic has transformed how we work together.

REGISTER FOR THE EVENT

What is the new normal of workplace communications?

As we approached the one-year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic, new questions rose to the surface about what the past 12 months might mean for workplace communications. How has the way leaders communicate with teams changed? What kind of training and support have employees come to expect? And how do we navigate internal communications in a landscape that is more fragmented than ever?

Here are a few of the questions we asked ourselves as we prepared our survey with True Global Intelligence:

Has work-life balance gotten better, or worse?

Employees that are finishing their first year of remote work have seen a dramatic shift in their day-to-day lives. How has that impacted work-life balance? How has work-life balance changed, if at all, for those still working on-site? We also wanted to better understand how work-life balance has changed for the more vulnerable groups within our workforce, including women.

What’s the most effective way for leaders to communicate with their teams?

There isn’t a leader on Earth who was fully prepared for this pandemic. How have leaders managed to keep up with shifting employee needs during these extraordinarily volatile times? What’s the best way to get a message across to their teams, and how can they encourage alignment outside the confines of an office?

Do employees feel more disconnected from their teams?

The very real risks posed by the global health crisis have, for many, made work feel less important. At the same time, our lives have shrunk considerably, and work remains a huge part of lived experiences. The competition for employee attention has never been fiercer. Have interpersonal relationships at the office suffered as a result? How does this impact team efficacy, career development, and mental health?

What We Learned

We worked with True Global Intelligence to design a comprehensive survey diving deep into these questions (and more). We then surveyed 1000+ full-time employees to better understand their attitudes, pain points, and preferences around workplace communications.

When we first analyzed our findings, we were blown away at some of the insights it offered for how we should communicate with our teams. While office etiquette seems to be relaxing, office politics seem to be getting worse. Workplace communication is more fragmented, and training employees to use the right channels—like in the video below—is increasingly important.

Use this video as a Vyond template.

Want to hear our full findings? Join us at PRWeek Convene: Employee Engagement to hear insights from Stacy Adams (head of marketing, Vyond) and Natasha Kennedy (managing director, True Global Intelligence). You can also access our full report here, and read some of our early discoveries in this resource post.

ACCESS THE FULL REPORT

About the Event

Convene: Employee Engagement is a free webcast event, brought to you by Vyond and PRWeek. PRWeek is the leading publication for professionals in the press and public relations industry. They epitomize the modern business publishing brand, spanning online, print, events and social media, incorporating a paid-for content strategy and gated website. Register today to hear brand new findings from Vyond’s research, conducted with True Global Intelligence.

REGISTER FOR THE EVENT

The post PRWeek Convene: Employee Engagement appeared first on Vyond.

An hour is hardly enough time to cover such a broad, diverse, and deep subject as the agile mindset, so—in the spirit of agility—I let the audience decide which topics we would explore in more detail. That’s right: even our webinar was agile!

I borrowed from an agile facilitation technique for agenda-free meetings to ask attendees what content they care about. (It turns out that, sometimes, building the right content really is as simple as asking people what they want.)

Today, I thought I’d recap some of the concepts we covered and link out to a few resources and bonus materials. Read on for a quick introduction to agile for content creators, and watch the full webinar recording on-demand here.

An Introduction to the Agile Mindset

Agile is a journey of continuous learning, and I was lucky enough to start mine at ICAgile: a prominent accreditation and certification body for agile training. I got to work on their marketing team for three and a half years prior to joining Vyond, and during that time, I got a really great foundation in the agile mindset.

The term “agile mindset” was coined by ICAgile co-founder Ahmed Sidky, who built upon Dr. Carol Dweck’s work to show how continuous learning is at the heart of business agility. This is an important distinction from popular discourse on Agile. It isn’t a way of doing things, it’s a way of being, grounded in a willingness to discover, change, experiment, and fail.

In preparation for our webinar, I hopped on the phone with Ahmed himself to talk about this idea. Our call was so great, we hopped into Vyond Studio to create an animated explainer video with kinetic type and imagery:

How to Create Content in an Agile Way

During our webinar, I employed a Lean Coffee approach to decide which topics were most valuable. I gave six pitches to the audience of topics we could explore further:

• Agile Values
• Agile Workflows
• Agile Project Management
• Promoting an Agile Culture
• Roles on an Agile Team
• Continuously Improving Your Content

After a quick poll, we settled on three of those topics to discuss in the webinar: Agile Workflows, Agile Project Management, and Continuously Improving Your Content. Read on to review some of the concepts we covered!

Agile Workflows

Transforming the way we create content sounds great and all, but how do we even begin with the daily onslaught of new work coming at us?

Content creation is really difficult to manage in a way that is similar to software development. We creators often suffer from “death by a million cuts,” constantly cranking out tiny tasks like correcting typos, drafting emails, and designing single-use graphics. We’re expected to simultaneously tackle larger projects with whatever advance notice we’re afforded, be it creating a short film, developing an employee training program, or implementing a rebrand.

Overburdening yourself with too much work in progress results in decreased focus, decreased productivity, and decreased follow-through. It also often means that your most valuable content never gets produced, all while simple low-value content gets cranked out.

To avoid that, agilists instead adopt a “pull” system of work. Aside from getting your work out more quickly, a pull system enables you to get out the *right* work more quickly. This all starts in the backlog.

The backlog is a space to collect new tasks and actively prioritize them according to their value (to the business, and to your audience). Even if your backlog is too long to ever empty out, the important thing is you know what’s most valuable. You then pull those most valuable tasks or content into progress, consciously reducing the amount of work you have in progress at any given time.

It’s important to visualize this pull system of work to develop a shared understanding across your team of what’s most important. It allows collaborators to help get your top priorities done, and collectively avoid too much work in progress (or WIP). Here’s a GIF I made in Vyond showing an example of how to visualize flow-based work with a Kanban-style task board:

Looking for a tool to visualize content workflows in an agile way? Check out Kanban Tool, Asana or Trello!

Agile Project Management

The authors of the Agile Manifesto built upon the four values of an agile mindset with twelve principles. A few of those principles have great insights for any content creator embarking on a larger project:

Welcome changing requirements, even late in development.

When you write a campaign brief or describe what you need from your contributors, how fixed are those requirements?

If you’re in the business of writing requirements for content that others will help create, it is in your best interest to write requirements that are focused on outcomes, open to creative interpretation, and flexible enough to adapt to new information. If you’re a writer or designer in the business of fulfilling such requirements, it’s in your best interest to be patient and open to change.

Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.

If you work on a team that produces content, keep an eye out for ideas that bring a sparkle to your teammate’s eyes. By being open to divergent ideas and even weird experiments with your content, you welcome the opportunity to discover a truly special way to reach your audiences.

Conversely, second-guess any projects nobody seems motivated to finish. Some important work is, of course, groan-worthy. But, if none of your creators find the content compelling enough to get excited about making it, it’s worth asking just how valuable that content will be to your audience.

The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.

When you’re kicking off a content project, don’t dole out assignments and requirements right off the bat. Instead, consider working with contributors to identify and organize the tasks that need to be performed. If you’re managing the project, you can instantly make it more agile by focusing your efforts on coordinating, and not defining, the work.

Start by giving contributors a prompt, and leave some room for contributors to create their own to-do lists and deadlines. They’ll be motivated and invested in the project, and your content will be stronger for it.

At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior.

How many of us content creators are guilty of finishing a project and then never talking about it again?

It’s (too) easy to move on from a major effort and to immediately shift focus to the next big project on the horizon. When you do that, though, you miss out on learnings that are essential to create your best content.

In the agile world, these meetings (or “ceremonies”) are called retrospectives. There are tons of great templates and resources out there for facilitating powerful retrospectives. No matter how you do it, though, the thing is to build the muscle to reflect on your work as a trusting, collaborative team. Ideally, your content team can have regular retrospectives (say, monthly). In the very least, you should schedule a debrief session after any major undertaking.

Continuously Improving Your Content

Agile content creation is predicated on a fundamental shift in our mindset. We’re moving on from printshop-era approaches where we perfect and push “finalized” content. Rather than forcing one-way conversations onto our audiences, we can learn from and even engage them in the creative process.

To take on this mindset shift, you need to establish a culture where failure is learning, experimentation is welcome, and feedback is a gift. Beyond building a learning culture, you’ll need to rethink how you organize your work to ensure it can be continuously optimized.

Instead of publishing a whole series or campaign at once, try releasing content incrementally. By releasing small bits of content gradually over time, you have a chance to learn what works (and what doesn’t). That learning can then be directly applied to subsequent pieces.

Instead of fanatically following “best practices” in SEO or other formulaic disciplines, emphasize the opportunity to experiment with your work. If your team can’t decide how something should be done, start small with your wildest idea. You’ll inevitably learn what works best, and also open yourself up to new possibilities.

Instead of constantly focusing on the next deadline, take time to look at what you’ve already created. Recycle (and upcycle) content frequently, and don’t be shy about revamping old content. Acknowledge the natural learning that comes with the passage of time, and invest in proactive learning with retrospectives.

Instead of letting the highest paid person in the room dictate what you create, build a creative team rooted in openness, creativity, empowerment, and listening. Your best ideas will come from the people with the dirtiest hands, and your best content will be produced by motivated contributors.

And, finally, instead of being protective with your work, open yourself up to early feedback and contributions from unexpected sources. Look for authoring tools like Vyond that allow edit access and permission controls so that you can share drafts of your content early in the creative process.

Make videos in an agile way.

Break away from the pain of traditional video production and start making videos in an agile way. With collaboration tools like Vyond Studio, you’re able to restore collaboration and experimentation in the creative process while still unleashing the power of rich media. Vyond is designed to empower team members so that they can share information with engaging content. Get familiar with Vyond Studio’s teamwork features and try Vyond free for 14 days.

TRY VYOND: NO CREDIT CARD REQUIRED

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