the "city beautiful" changed forever
This attack happened right in our backyard and we wanted to help in any way we could. It was early the next morning when I received a phone call from my CEO; it was a somber conversation, but one that motivated us to do something to raise money for the families. His idea was to design t-shirts and give 100% of the profits to the families of the Pulse nightclub victims.
The following Monday morning, I gathered the design team and we locked ourselves in a room to put our heads together to come up with a design. We wanted a design that captured an idea that even though this tragedy was motivated by hate and divisiveness, this community was still standing, together, with our brothers and sisters in LGBT+ community and we are ALL one.
one world, one city, one family,
one love, one heart,
one pulse
We knew this design needed to include symbols of our LGBT+ community as well as the message of One City, One love, and One Pulse. After several iterations we landed on the idea of incorporating the Pride flag and their colors along with a singular "1" that acted as a "flag pole" to hold the message. As a base color, we chose black to symbolize our mourning for the victims. We eventually expanded the message so that we could include each color represented in the flag. The final message reads "One World, One City, One Family, One Love, One heart, and One Pulse".
And kudos to our marketing team who picked a hash tag that was in it's infancy when trending, but exploded to the most used hashtag during the events that followed and that continue to this day.
the candlelight vigil
Originally, our plan was to sell only a few boxes of shirts at the candle light vigil and donate the money. When we sold 250 shirts in less than 10 minutes, we knew we could do more.
we had to make more
We were not prepared for the out-pour of support and the demand for these 1Pulse Orlando shirts during the vigil. After that night, we decided to switch gears and mass produce the shirts. We converted our office into a make-shift packaging facility, hand-rolled each t-shirt and did what we knew best; however, instead of driving demand for websites, we drove demand for these shirts.
We quickly setup an online merchant account and spread the word on the radio, social media, and by word of mouth.
officially going viral
We were floored by how quickly word spread. We heard advertisements on the radio, TV, Social Media; everyone wanted to purchase a shirt to show their solidarity and give back to the families. In the end, our efforts help raise over $80,000 and donated all profits to the families of the victims of the Pulse Night Club shooting.
