Title	PROUD PITCH
Brand	COPENHAGEN PRIDE
Product/Service	INSTAGRAM RAINBOW FLAG FILTER
Category	A01. Glass
Entrant	WORTH YOUR WHILE AGENCY Copenhagen, DENMARK
Idea Creation	WORTH YOUR WHILE AGENCY Copenhagen, DENMARK
Production	WORTH YOUR WHILE AGENCY Copenhagen, DENMARK

Name	Company	Position
Carl Angelo	Worth Your While	Design Director
Lukas Lund	Worth Your While	Creative
Martin Furze	Worth Your While	Creative
Oliver Gormsen	Worth Your While	Technology
Martin Ginsborg	Worth Your While	Creative

Why is this work relevant for Glass: The Award for Change

As the 2021 UEFA European Championships took place, everybody had their eyes set on one of the worlds biggest sporting events. A time where different cultures meet to celebrate and experience the huge impact football can have on humanity. But UEFA's banning of the rainbow flag was living proof that there's still injustice in the world when it comes to human rights. Because either all people have the right to rights - or the opposite. So with the proud and open minded approach to sexuality and gender we have in Denmark, the LGBTQIA+ organization, Copenhagen Pride simply had to act and raise a flag for equality. That’s we encouraged followers of Copenhagen Pride to help flag the injustice and raise their voice on this important topic, by using a digital protest Instagram filter – and share their beliefs with the world.

Background

Hungary issued hostile laws against the local LGBTQIA+ during the 2021 UEFA European Championships, raising protests everywhere. These where fuelled even more by the cowardly decision by UEFA to prevent the lighting of The Allianz Arena in Munich in rainbow colours. The Danish LGBTQIA+ organisation Copenhagen Pride exists to make sure everyone can be who they want to be, no matter gender and sexuality – also in the world of sports. That's why they felt the need to react when UEFA banned the rainbow flag. To raise their flag, they wanted to build a digital protest tool that allows user to express themselves and apply pressure to UEFA.

Describe the cultural / social / political climate in your region and the significance of your campaign within this context

Denmark is one of the most progressive nations in the world for LGBTI+ equality: Decriminalising homosexuality in 1933. Gender confirmation surgery first took place in 1951. Introduced anti-discrimination legislation in 1987 and in 1989 legalised same-sex partnerships. In 2014, they allowed legal change of gender without requiring prior medical approval, and in 2017 were the first to remove being transgender from the list of mental illnesses. So it's with pride that Copenhagen Pride has equality and human rights in their DNA. But not all countries are as fortunate to have this progressive and openminded history, so when Copenhagen Pride saw that injustice for gay rights where happening in the world of sports, they wanted to push their brand purpose outside of the danish borders and onto the global stage: Whatever your sexuality, gender identity, race, religion, nationality – or any other factor – you are human. And Love Always Wins.

Describe the creative idea

We wanted every football fan on the planet to be able to show their support. But how? Well, it just so happens that every football pitch in the world is also a "green screen". So together with Copenhagen Pride we created the Proud Pitch Instagram AR filter, that turns every pitch on the planet into a weapon in the fight against homophobia in football. A rainbow flag. All you had to do was to search for Proud Pitch in the filter gallery in instagram – record a live story from a football match – place the rainbow flag on the pitch – and share it with the world. The entire project was created in less than 48 hours, from idea and prototyping to launch film.

Describe the strategy

As the 2021 UEFA European Championships took place, everybody had their eyes set on one of the worlds biggest sporting events. But UEFA's banning of the rainbow flag was living proof that there's still injustice in the world when it comes to human rights. Because either all people have the right to rights - or the opposite. We encouraged followers of Copenhagen Pride to help flag the injustice and raise their voice on this important topic, by using the filter – and share their beliefs with the world. Our approach was to create a digital protest tool that allows user to express themselves and apply pressure to UEFA. It was, and still is, their hope that people across the world will unite and show their support by using it during the matches. It might be a small gesture, but no act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.

Describe the execution

Through Instagrams Spark AR platform we could use chroma keying technology to create a mask that removed all green colours and replacing them with a big beautiful rainbow flag. This allowed people to simply film a sequence from the game, place the rainbow flag and enjoy how all the players where instantly masked out thus making them all run around playing football on a huge rainbow pitch. Timing was of the essence as we needed to react super fast to UEFA's disgraceful decision to ban the rainbow flag on the stadium. With that in mind we created the entire project in less than 48 hours, from idea and prototyping to launch film – just in time for the next round of games. The idea lived naturally on Instagram, but we pushed our launch film out through YouTube and Facebook as well, driving people to Instagram to find the filter.

Describe the results / impact

For a local danish LGBTQ organisation it made a big impact to launch the project as it gained a raise in traffic to the Copenhagen Pride website and social channels. This came mainly from organic PR in different categories – from creative media such as Little Black Book and AdAge to important LGBTQ media such as Out News Global, the world's most fabulous LGBTQ magazine. We saw usage of the filter and shared stories from all around the nordics, the UK and US. And funny enough the gender split was almost equal - 51% male, 47% female and 2% undefined. Almost 40.000 stories was shared on Instagram, tagging UEFA. And in 1.3 million online readership and hundreds of social shares – for a $0 media spend. The filter is still pushed today to raise awareness on this important humans rights topics.