#LightItBlue - Campaign Development
The world came to a grinding halt in 2020, and we all felt a bit of mental whiplash—shifting from our hectic schedules to FaceTime game nights and learning how to make our own sourdough bread at home. It was an uncertain, unprecedented time when we were all trying to make sense of what was happening. While we hunkered down to ride out what ultimately became the COVID-19 pandemic, an incredible team at Thinkwell Group (now a TAIT Towers company) was the first to bring a campaign, initially started in the U.K., stateside.
Enter #LightItBlue.
The #LightItBlue campaign was created to raise awareness and honor the first responders and healthcare workers on the frontlines of the pandemic. As this story unfolds, Joe Zenas—one of the three owners at the time—received a call from a colleague in the United Kingdom, where a campaign was starting to form, encouraging people to thank NHS workers by clapping at a specific time and day. Simple and effective, but it needed more.
An idea was quickly hatched, and it was all hands on deck. We reached out to every business contact we knew to see if they could illuminate their stadiums, theme parks, and national or global landmarks in a beacon of blue light every Thursday evening at 8:00 PM local time.
We received the memo from the marketing department and were immediately set to work. During this time, we transitioned from in-office to remote work. This was only weeks into the pandemic, and we all had to figure out how to adjust our ongoing projects as well as this immediate, urgent one.
Very early on, I foresaw the need to develop a project tracker to log which venues committed to the cause, points of contact (both internal and external), and a media folder of photos and videos received after the launch. With such a short turnaround time, we had to be organized, nimble, and efficient in all our communications to ensure this took off as we intended. After a quick huddle with our web, media, and graphics departments, we built a website within the week, launched Facebook and Instagram pages, and were ready to go.
As the Marketing Specialist, I managed social media coverage and utilized our collaborator log to track posts as they arrived, responding to comments and maintaining an optimistic, forward-moving messaging filled with gratitude. In developing the media log of content, I collaborated cross-functionally with the Media team to produce our sizzle reel immediately after the first week of coverage.
Until this point, I had never encountered a project as fast-moving as this, but it taught me a few lessons I still apply today:
Communicate—but be GOOD at it.
We all hear this so often that it becomes white noise, but there’s a difference between communicating just to move things along and communicating with intention. In this case, we had to compress information for speed. No “I hope you’re doing well” (especially during this time)—just, “Hey John, we’re working on this project. Here’s the information (bullet-pointed and in short sentences). We’d love your buy-in. Here’s the deadline. Let us know and we’ll add you to the list.” It was that short. We took a similar approach with the website—less fluff. This wasn’t a moment for fun. This was a serious unknown, and we found a way to truly shine a light on it to uplift spirits. And it worked.
Stay organized.
It’s a discipline I’ve honed over the years and one that pushed me in the moment, given the number of moving parts and the speed at which we were operating. It was the fastest turnaround time I’d ever experienced to build, promote, and deploy a campaign. If it hadn’t been for the practice of clean folders and file mapping, we would’ve wasted a lot of unnecessary time searching for what we needed. By utilizing a keyword-based filing system, we were able to work quickly and efficiently to tag content based on type and location, which allowed us to filter it rapidly.
On the first night of #LightItBlue, there was a massive wave of support. From Southern California icons like Knott’s Berry Farm and the USC Coliseum to global landmarks like the Tokyo Tower, dozens of Thinkwell employees called, emailed, and texted anyone they knew. Because of those efforts, the campaign trended in the top 10 on Twitter (now X), made the morning news on Good morning america, and continued gaining traction for weeks as more locations joined in.
To this day, I’m incredibly proud of my work on this project, as it tested me in many ways and gave me the opportunity to rise to the moment, remain calm under pressure, and ultimately succeed during a very tense, high-stakes period.
PDF EXAMPLES OF #LIGHTITBLUE WEBSITE
LIST OF ALL LOCATIONS INVOLVED IN #LIGHTITBLUE
