2024 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

Since the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill was passed in 2022, the number of homophobic and transphobic incidents across the U.S. has skyrocketed. But in Canada, there’s a dangerous perception that the same problem doesn’t exist, because anti-LGBTQ+ hate hasn’t been tracked since well before 2021. Egale Canada, the country’s leading 2SLGBTQI advocacy organization, wanted to make the rising tide of hate unignorable — in order to rally people against it.

Due to the lack of up-to-date Canadian data, they needed to find it themselves. They started by scrubbing every social post from Canada against thousands of hateful terms like ‘groomer’, ‘pedophile’, and ‘eradicate’ in relation to the LGBTQ+ community. Next, they tracked every anti-LGBTQ+ protest using ACLED (the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project). Then, they parsed the collective data and removed anything with a positive sentiment.

They confined their results to the first three months of 2023. The result? 6,423 separate hate-fuelled incidents. A number they then turned into a powerful data visualization, by removing exactly 6,423 threads from the Pride flag itself.

The unravelled Pride flag was launched with a 60-second film, featuring diverse voices from the 2SLGBTQI community — including trans activist Al Val, and Scarlett Bobo and Hollywood Jade from Canada’s Drag Race. Next, the unravelled flag appeared in print, OOH, social media, and at live events.

They also made a suite of social media assets available for download, so that people could repurpose them to spread the urgency of their message, but in their own voice. Most importantly, a safety toolkit was developed in partnership with Fierté Canada Pride—the leading body for all Canadian Pride events — and made available on their campaign website. Finally, the stories behind the 6,423 instances of hate were printed, bound with actual threads from the unravelled flag, and sent to government officials to lobby for more urgent responses to 2SLGBTQI issues. From data collection to campaign creation, a diverse team of 2SLGBTQI individuals and allies were involved.

They broke through the perception that anti-LGBTQ+ hate isn’t a problem in Canada, and created a massive dialogue with over 150K organic views of their online video in its first 24 hours and over 73 million earned media impressions from news outlets nationwide, all of which referenced their data as quantifiable proof of the rising tide of hate.

The campaign also inspired action: the Canadian government pledged $1.5 million in emergency funding for Pride event security. And the unravelled flag itself became a symbol of solidarity to call out bigotry online.

Campaign assets were used by labour unions, schools, research centres, and other advocacy organizations across Canada and hundreds of TikTok users, whose content generated over 120K organic views.

In the end, they created a visceral symbol of the unprecedented hate the 2SLGBTQI community is facing — rallying a community, and a country, to take action.

Credits

Graham Lang, Chief Creative Officer, TAXI
Allen Kwong, Group Creative Director, TAXI
Mike Richardson, Creative Director, TAXI
Zachary Richman, Copywriter, TAXI
Logan Franklin, Art Director, TAXI

Valentina Fortun, Designer, TAXI
Anh Nguyen, Designer, TAXI
Kyle Simpson, Designer, TAXI

Jonathan Lajoie, Producer, TAXI
Amy Delafontaine, Strategy Director, TAXI
Michal Fetsum, Social Strategist, TAXI
Jessy Stark, Digital Producer, TAXI

Regina Garcia, Photographer
Sparks, Photography Production Company
Jonathan Lajoie, Director
Ash Tailor-Jones, Cinematographer
Rooster Post Production, Editorial House
Colin Murdock, Editor, Rooster Post Production
OSO Audio, Sound
Fort York VFX, Online/Post
Alter Ego Post, Colour

Jennifer Boyce, Director of Communications & Marketing, Egale Canada
Mark Fellion, Director of Development, Egale Canada