kindness card
brief:
A group of anonymous philanthropists came to us with a big ask—to mitigate the bitterness of 2017, they wanted us to make New York City kinder.
idea:
It's not that kindness isn't making its rounds in NYC. Only that no one ever hears about it.
The Kindness Card is an initiative to recognize, reward, and record kindness happening in NYC.
We first created the Kindness Card–a physical symbol of appreciation and a $10 reward. They also helped us track kindness in a famously unkind city.
These cards were seeded out to people spotted doing acts of kindness, who were in turn encouraged to pass them on. Each recipient could use it to redeem their $10 reward, or donate it to a charity of their choice, before passing it on again. So the more the cards travelled, the more data we collected about kindness in NYC, and the better we could shed the stigma of nasty NYers.
the site
By logging their kind act and geotagging where it had happened on out site, people were able to both redeem their reward as well as contribute their own stories of kindness.
Using the stories we’d gleaned, we set about thanking the city.
We put up contextual OOHs all over the city, each referencing a specific act of kindness right where it happened.
We also painted up some murals and sidewalk art in all five boroughs. Pulling up Snapchat near them revealed a custom filter for selfie-ing away with.
on social
What’s a campaign without some social content? Throughout the month, we posted uplifting stories, stats, quotes, and portraits.
For the full breadth of warm fuzzy feels, check out our Instagram page.
Our experiment spread to 18 states, traveled overseas, and raised thousands for charity–all proving what we already knew. That NYC is a kind place.
To top it off, this campaign also received coverage from several media outlets, from HuffPo to the evening news, adding to our 8.5 million impressions. Not bad for just 30 days.
It also won Best Mobile Campaign at the Shorty Awards, and was a Finalist in both the ‘Organic Promotions’ and ‘Contest or Promotion’ categories.