The Ad Council is celebrating Valentine’s Day and the one-year anniversary of Love Has No Labels with the release of a new video voiced by award-winning actress Jane Lynch and social activations across platforms to further the message of acceptance across all communities.
The new video looks back on the extraordinary strides the nation has made in diversity and inclusion, and reminds viewers about the continued need to rethink their biases. Campaign brand partners The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, P&G, Unilever and State Farm will join the celebration, including sharing social content on their channels.
“Love Has No Labels instantly struck an emotional chord with people throughout the world and initiated a dialogue about the importance of accepting and loving others, and celebrating our differences,” said Lisa Sherman, president and CEO of the Ad Council. “With the one-year anniversary of the filming coming up and the holiday that celebrates love, I can’t think of a better time to remind audiences about our messages.”
Created pro bono by R/GA, Love Has No Labels encourages audiences to examine their implicit biases — ones most people don’t realize they have — in order to promote acceptance regardless of race, religion, gender, sexuality, age and ability. Since the initial video, filmed on Valentine’s Day 2015, debuted exclusively by Upworthy it has been viewed over 160 million times making it the 2nd most viewed video of 2015. Additionally, it was the 2nd most viral video on Facebook, the 4th most viewed on YouTube and one of the best performing Upworthy videos of all time. As a result, there have been over 2.7 million sessions on lovehasnolabels.com, where visitors can take a quiz to examine their own bias. Since the video launched, more adults report discussing discrimination and prejudice and saying that they are regularly accepting and inclusive of others, according to a recent Ad Council survey. However approximately 20 percent of adults still report they themselves are prejudiced or discriminatory.
Today Upworthy is kicking off the anniversary activation with an original video highlighting milestones in diversity over the past year, including the legalization of same sex marriage, transgender awareness, the first female Army Rangers and many more, as well as noteworthy moments for the campaign. The video calls on viewers to share their own stories using the hashtag #lovehasnolabels to further awareness around this issue. The campaign also encourages audiences to use Faces of Love, a social tool on the campaign website, to upload a picture showing how their love has no labels. To date, more than 1,000 personal stories have been shared in the social gallery of the website and the hashtag has been used over 30,000 times generating over 110 million potential impressions.
Additionally, HelpsGood, a social good-focused digital agency, created a series of Valentine’s Day e-cards featuring the campaign’s iconic skeletons that can be shared with loved ones, including friends and family members across social media channels. The ecards remind users to put aside identity labels in the name of love and symbolize that before anything else, we’re all human. A number of social and digital partners are also lending their support and resources to the Love Has No Labels celebration, including AOL where there will be features on the campaign throughout the site.
Since the campaign launched last year, it has received an outpouring of support and recognition: the video, created by R/GA, won eight Cannes Lions and 11 Clio Awards; YouTube creator, Joey Graceffa exclusively shared his coming out story to help further campaign messaging; and within days of the initial video launch, the message was shared by influencers including the First Lady, George Takei, Deepak Chopra and Mario Goetz.
To date, the campaign has received nearly $27 million in donated media, including $8.68 million in media value generating nearly 6 billion digital impressions from AOL. New creative for Love Has No Labels will be launching across the country this spring.
