Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for having me. I’m so thrilled to be here at Frank with all of you and share a story about this little red logo that became one of Facebook’s most viral campaigns in its history. A little bit behind the scenes, but also I think that how we approach this campaign is, you know, I’m a little biased, but I think it’s best in class in terms of communication. So let’s start the story. And if you’ll indulge me for a moment, I just want to take a trip down memory lane. In December of 2012, we had heard that the Supreme Court was taking up not one, but two cases around the issue of marriage equality. And this was historic. Never before had the court weighed in on issues of marriage. And not only were they hearing one case, but two. The first was a challenge to Proposition 8, which you may recall banned marriage between same-sex couples in California. And the second was a challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act, which barred legally same-sex marrying couples from receiving the same rights and benefits that heterosexual couples receive, of which there are more than a thousand. And so this was just an incredible moment in time. But furthermore, we had experienced a real tipping point in November 2012. This is a photo of some of my colleagues that are on the field team. You may recall that the issue of marriage was on the ballot in four states, three states to actively move marriage forward that would legalize marriage in those states, and one to bar a constitutional amendment to the state constitution. And so, again, never before had we experienced this specific moment in time. And we went to the ballot box every single time before we had lost. And so we all approached it with a sense of cautious optimism. And I can say I don’t think that any of us, with the exception of our field director, thought we would be victorious in all four states. So we came into this moment with real momentum. And furthermore, polling was on our side. At the time, eight out of 10 Americans said that they knew someone that was LGBT. That number is actually higher now. That’s nine in 10. And I think that it’s due in large part to the community coming out. It was no longer someone that you saw on TV or that it wasn’t like a pop culture thing. It was your friend. It was your family member. It was your coworker. It was your neighbor. I mean, it really personalized the issue in such a different way. You know, secondly, two other things that I like to point out is that in 2013, for the first time ever, a majority of Americans said that they supported marriage equality. And that was historic. I mean, never before have we seen polling like that going into the Supreme Court. And lastly, you know, during the ballot initiatives, we saw corporate support in a way that we had never seen that before. And I mention this because, you know, after the devastating loss in 2004 of all of the ballot campaigns across many states that the LGBT community experienced, the organization really shifted and said, where can we advocate for change and real cultural institutional change? And one of those was corporate America. And really, they have led the way when it comes to LGBT inclusion. But in 2012, they hadn’t weighed in on the issue of marriage. And for the first time they did by getting involved in those ballot initiatives. And then after that, with the Supreme Court, many of them signed on to brief supporting it. So we were just at this amazing moment in time. You know, at the Human Rights Campaign, we recognized that moment in time. So what we decided to do was we set up a communications war room. And essentially, every single day for six months, our job was to go into that war room and elevate the conversation around marriage that was happening across the country. We did so from an earned media and paid media perspective. Every single day, we had a singular focus about building a drumbeat to these cases. We were also very active planning for events in front of the Supreme Court. We knew this was going to be a big moment and that lots of people in support and then certainly in opposition were going to be at the Supreme Court. So we scripted something like 36 hours of speakers to demonstrate the widespread support across this country. So that was quite time consuming, as you can imagine. But furthermore, we knew that we needed to create a very strong digital plan. Not everyone was going to be in Washington able to join us, you know, to show their support out in front of the court. So we had a comprehensive work plan in place from a digital perspective. And I think that this is really unique to the way that we approach communications at HRC. Digital is not an afterthought. It is first and foremost at the front of the work that we do. Because we understand that that’s where people are having conversations. And so we built a very scripted plan that said for weeks leading up to the cases at 9 o’clock, at 10 o’clock, at 1 o’clock, at 3 o’clock, at 5 o’clock, what were we doing to drive the conversation online? How are we engaging with our audience? What were we putting out there that was new? How are we reusing content? We wanted to completely focus our audience and our supporters on these cases. And I think that that is what really distinguishes us. Our audience looked to us as the go to resource about these cases and knew that we were having a moment. And I often say, you know, if you don’t think that it’s, if you don’t treat it like a big deal, your audience isn’t going to either. And so we really built towards this moment. So as part of this, you know, unfortunately I worked for an incredible organization with a great established brand. And as part of this, I took our iconic blue and yellow logo and tinted it red. Which for us was the color of love and really what these cases symbolize. They’re about love. And so I did this and I’ll just share, I think one of the other keys to success is that I actually didn’t ask anybody. I told my boss. I just did it. And we’ll see what happens. So essentially we took all of our platforms and turned them red at the very same moment. So on Monday at two o’clock we posted this on our social network and asked all of our supporters to do the same. We also are very fortunate that we work with a lot of influencers and celebrities. And one of them was George Takei, who is an old friend of the organization. When he decided to come out publicly, he did so with the human rights campaign. And I worked with George on his coming out tour. He’s a wonderful person, wonderful supporter of the organization and also like an internet guru in his own right. So we went to George and about ten of our other top tier supporters and asked if they would participate in the campaign. So at six o’clock, George posted this and asked, I think at the time it was five million followers on Facebook to support the campaign. So as you do when you’re a communications person, you check your email before bed. And everything seemed really fine. We had a press conference the next morning, the first day of the cases at my president’s house. And so it was like a 5 a.m. press time. And so I was up, you know, 3.30, kind of up and about. I opened my email and I see this. HRC.org, my main communications vehicle has crashed. And at the time I’m telling you all I could think was fuck. What the fuck is going on? I had no idea. And I’m freaking out. This is a big deal. My president is the architect of the case that is challenging Proposition 8. I’m freaking out. My husband, my sage and wonderful husband grabs me by the shoulders and says, you and your colleagues have worked so hard for this moment. Don’t forget that whatever happens, the site is up. The site is down. You’re making history today. And I was like, all right, thanks. I got to go. We’re out. So I go to the press conference. I go to the Supreme Court. I’m like, my boss is like, tell me what’s happening. I’m like, I don’t know. I go back to the office. And again, my sage husband calls me and says, have you been on Facebook? I was like, babe, I don’t have time to be dealing with this. We didn’t know what was going on. We’re in crisis management mode. And I logged onto Facebook and saw what so many of you have probably experienced is that your entire feed, at least mine was, turned red in support of equality. I couldn’t believe it. There were only like… We had celebrities, corporations, politicians, and more importantly, everyday Americans changing their profile picture to the red logo. It was… I get chills when I think about it. It was so exhilarating to see this widespread support. But at the absence of it, it was that it was something easy for people to do, to feel like they were engaged and supportive on the issue. And it was just… It was absolutely thrilling to see it take off. So Facebook, later that day, I’m on the phone with Facebook saying, like, you guys got to give me some numbers. Like, they said to me, like, well, we were hoping you would tell us what’s going on. I said, we’re experiencing a phenomenon. And so they eventually helped produce some really interesting thing that essentially they could track that moment late on Monday night where they saw a huge uptick, not only just across the country, but around the world of people changing that. And 120%, you know, whatever the baseline is, 120% more people actually changed their profile picture in that moment. But they also came out later that week with this very helpful map. And I love this map because this shows you across… You can see Gainesville, right? Yeah. Yeah. The darker concentration of red is where more people changed their profile picture. And I love this because years ago, we were at a meeting on Capitol Hill with a legislator who said, well, there’s no gay people in my district. And I was like, well, the census says otherwise. But this map tells me about where our country is going in terms of fairness and equality. That in every single county across our country, people change their profile picture to the red logo because they support and believe in marriage equality, which was just… It just speaks volumes to me about where the country is headed on this issue. I want to share a little bit more about this strategy. We… You know, obviously for us, it’s about being where the conversation is, where it’s happening in that moment. So at the time around the Supreme Court, I did targeted ads in literally a square block radius to make sure that the media knew that we were actually advocating. And I was actually so paranoid that our opposition would try and like take one of our hashtags or sort of mount this opposition campaign. I need not have worried because they didn’t show up at all. But I was very active on Twitter and actually broke Twitter’s record that day for the most engagement with a promoted tweet. With 20%, usually it’s about 1% to 3% of people that engage with promoted tweets. But I mean, we were active everywhere. And furthermore, we saw this wonderful thing of which I’m sure so many of you experienced of all of the different means. My favorites up at the top. But you know, I love this because I think what we gave people, you know, we took something iconic and we created something really beautiful, but we didn’t put like hrc.org slash marriage. We really let people make it their own. And that I think is really critical to the success of this. It wasn’t about an organization. It was about a movement. And that is something that, you know, from an organizational perspective, there’s some tug there. But this was a moment for us when we looked at this and said, you know, essentially like we’re embracing this. We were at every media interview I did. I was actively promoting this because it wasn’t about me or it wasn’t about the organization. It was about all of these people that, you know, made this their own that stood up to their entire social network and said that I believe in equality. And we were just astounded and delighted at the response that we received and sort of people really being so creative and clever. Well, now we know why my site crashed. We had overnight from about midnight to 3 a.m. experienced a 600% increase in traffic. And we were just completely shut down in 12 hours. We’ve never experienced anything like that. But I’m very fortunate I work with a great team. And so we instantly directed our DNS to Tumblr. And we were able to take advantage of Tumblers built in audience and essentially post instantly. So it felt like very much a rapid campaign that was happening because we were posting photos or little vignettes or video minute by minute. And I love this. I got so many emails like, oh, you’re so brilliant. Like you switched to Tumblr. And it was really out of necessity. But I was actually tested again because when Ellen Page, you may recall last year about this time, she decided to publicly come out as lesbian. She did so with the human rights campaign at one of our events. And so anticipating that this was going to be a problem, we instantly switched to Tumblr again. And really Tumblr, every time I’m running a large scale campaign, is my go-to now. I am not even sort of messing around. We just instantly switch it because of all the great things that it provides. And so we received widespread coverage. And I think that this was another critical element. We weren’t just waiting for reporters to call us. We were actively sending releases, pitching to make sure that we were positioned, but also in control of the story. And so we were fortunate because Facebook took so long to get their data out that that gave us another bite at the apple. But this was, we were very, very proactive about making sure that we were inserted into the stories. And journalists were actually hungry for something more that week. And so we really owned that entire week of news. And so I want to, these are just a few points I always like to share about what I think makes us so successful at the human rights campaign. We are always thinking about how can we be opportunistic? How do we take something? How do we blow it up? How do we make it big? This happens to us every single day. So in anticipation of the Supreme Court, again hearing marriage this year, we teamed up with Roberta Kaplan and Edie Windsor. As you may recall, Roberta Kaplan was the legal mastermind behind the DOMA Challenge. And Edie Windsor was her client. A beautiful story. And so we’ve created something called the People’s Brief. You can sign onto it at thepeoplebrief.org. But essentially, Robbie Kaplan authored this brief, which we’re expecting will be one of the largest public briefs ever submitted to the Supreme Court in favor of marriage equality. And we are always looking for these moments. It’s not always a marriage moment, but it’s always a moment. And we think opportunistically. And we’re credibly nimble about how we operate. The other thing is that we think externally. We are always looking for stories or things that are happening. And how do we insert ourselves into that dialogue? And I think that oftentimes people are trying to push something up a hill that there isn’t the public appetite for. And so sometimes you have to be a little bit creative and think, what are people talking about? And how do you get your point of view across? Have a plan. And I cannot emphasize this enough. Our scripted plan of building that drumbeat was the key to our success. And furthermore, I mean, I probably still have PTSD for meeting every day. But we, for the outcome of the Supreme Court, we had 19 releases, 19 separate emails, an entire minute-by-minute scripted plan of how to get our president on a plane and where he was going. I mean, and every single day, every day for six months, we met as a team of 20 and went over it again and again and again. To the point where we were so well-oiled. I mean, it was like everyone was so confident and maybe overly confident, but we went and we executed flawlessly. And that’s what happens. This viral moment did not just happen. We had a plan of how to get us there. And I think using these key points was critical. And the last thing I want to share is personal stories matter. I mean, people care about other people at the end of the day. And for us at the Human Rights Campaign, the business that I’m in is changing hearts and minds. Because the work that I do affects people and their lives immediately. And so I want to share a little story about the campaign and its impact. We got this through, sent directly to our president, Chad Griffin. And he shared this story of a man named Justin. Now, Justin was a soldier who lived in Arkansas. And you can imagine what it’s like to be gay in Arkansas. It’s not easy. And he had come out to his mother, who was a Christian, and it hadn’t gone very well. In fact, they hadn’t spoken since he had come out to her. Months go by. And he sees on Facebook that she had actually changed her profile picture to the red logo. And he said, she said, as Justin’s mom, I may not like his lifestyle choice, but he knows he has my support in whatever he does. We may not agree on his choices, but he’s still my baby. And you don’t mess with one of my clubs. Love you so much, Justin, and I’m so proud of who you are. And he said for the first time in his life, he felt loved and supported for who he actually was. And that, I think, is the power of the campaign. Personal stories matter, changing hearts and minds, but that doesn’t happen automatically. It happens one conversation at a time. And digital is at the forefront of making that happen. I’m so pleased to have been with you today at Frank. Thank you all so much for having me. Enjoy your home day. Thank you.