Pride In London

Challenge

Understanding impact

Research conducted by Pride has shown that there are a number of reasons for attending the event, such as celebrating the community's success (42%), having a great day out with family and friends (19%), to simply be part of the parade (16%) or to make a political statement (11%). Stakeholders range from businesses to charities, religious groups to trade unions. Each group has a different voice, agenda and priority.

The diversity of Pride's community gives some indication of the challenges Pride in London faces when it comes to managing community segments and messages. "Yes, Pride is a celebration of achievements, but it's also a platform for campaigning and raising awareness of problems and issues still faced by the LBGT+ community. It's important that the campaign's message isn't diluted along the way."

The power of visibility is at the heart of Pride. The bigger the community, the further the message reach, however growing a community is easier said than done. "We also need to connect with people outside of the LBGT+ community as their actions influence member's living their lives as equals. This wider community is therefore essential in reaching if we're to raise awareness and achieve the spot for the loudest megaphone to drive change." Stephen explains. With countless organizations battling it out to have brand time with audiences, Pride in London is forced to think differently about their communication strategy in order to increase visibility.

Solution

Media monitoring to make sense of the conversations and trends

Pride use Meltwater's social media monitoring tool to make sense of conversations taking place online. "Social listening helps us better understand whether key messages are resonating or becoming lost in the noise. We measure messages using volume and sentiment metrics. Looking at the tonality of conversations is particularly helpful in ensuring we continue to be objective with regard to the success of our campaigns. Objectivity can sometimes be hard without the help of data, especially when you're so emotionally involved in the setup."

The community has great ownership over the events, and this dictates how Pride engages with the diverse community. Through social listening, Pride is able to uncover emerging themes in conversation data and pick up on trends important to the audience that they may not have considered before. "The best way to increase engagement with our audience is to focus our communications around topics they deem important."

Pride also use Meltwater to track their community growth and ROI. Their tremendous growth, both online and offline, is clearly reflected in the numbers. "In 2013-2014 Pride grew by 135%, from 2014-2015 growth peaked to 215% and indications suggest 2016's community growth will follow the same trend. I attribute such positive growth to authentic engagement- reflecting community views in our messaging and bringing them to a wider audience through fully integrated and interactive campaigns."