I’ve had the opportunity to lead global creative for Twitter’s employee-resource groups – employee-led organizations designed to foster inclusion and diversity within the company and on Twitter. From @TwitterAsians to @TwitterOpen, @Blackbirds, @TwitterWomen and @TwitterAble, the purpose of the campaigns are to support and celebrate the diversity and intersectionality of each community, and give a platform for their voices.
As inspiration and prep for each campaign, we run a focus group session with a global representation of Tweeps from the community, together with our creative team. These focus groups have been funny, sad, insightful, and always eye-opening. And crucial to the creative development – because presenting these campaigns to the group leads and launching them out into the world has been the biggest reward for the work that goes into them - there have been tears, cheers, and gratefulness for feeling seen.
Here are a few of the (nine!) I&D campaigns I’ve had the privilege of leading over the last year.
Twitter I&D
#AlwaysProud for @TwitterOpen
Too often Pride is seen as a moment in time, a month in the year. But the LGBTQ community celebrates all year long, in small and big ways – as one @TwitterOpen member said, “It’s about having pride to step outside your door everyday. It’s not just people in a parade of floats.” This year, we also had the opportunity to bring the community together across time zones and continents during a pandemic, challenged to create a campaign that both celebrated the diversity but felt connected with a unifying spirit of #AlwaysProud.
A custom hashmoji for #AlwaysProud celebrated the ongoing progress of the queer community.
We launched with a video that brought individual, unique stories together under the banner of a shared Pride experience.
#LoveToSeeIt for @Blackbirds
For Black History Month 2020, we wanted to raise black voices and deepen black pride at Twitter and beyond. Rather than only focusing on the leaders of our past and the change-makers in our present, we aimed to do what Twitter does best – connect Black people in the moment and celebrate the sheer joy of being a Black person right now, through our campaign #LoveToSeeIt.
Our #LoveToSeeIt hashmoji celebrated this vibrant, multifaceted black community.
#RepresentAsian for @TwitterAsians
The Asian community is much more diverse in culture and heritage than is typically represented – it is made of many backgrounds, languages, geographies, and communities. Twitter gives a platform to these individual voices.
Our hashmoji design was inspired by the art of Chinese and Japanese knotting, symbolizing the weaving together of many Asian cultures.
#DisabledAndAble for @TwitterAble
@TwitterAble is a new employee group working to raise the visibility and recognize the diversity and value of the disabled community.
Disabled people can too often be seen as less-than, people to simply accommodate, or are defined entirely by their disability. Designed to break these misconceptions, our campaign #DisabledAndAble focuses on the “and,” celebrating the additive value of disabled people in the workplace and to society. This “and” extends to each person’s intersectional identities - a disabled person can also be an artist, a mother, an engineer at Twitter. We used National Disability Employment Awareness Month to generate awareness and create conversation about this topic, and this is part of Twitter’s larger effort prioritizing the hiring of more quality talent from the disabled community.
The “&” is a symbol of intersectionality and inclusion but also signifies the additive power of disabled people in the workplace. This became the hashmoji and key visual for #DisabledAndAble.
Because this ERG ends up intersecting with every other one within Twitter, we asked all the other ERGs to participate with their “ands.” Strengthening our message and solidarity between all of our I&D communities.
Tweeps and the larger community participated with their “ands” as well.