#OOH Love Happens Here!

Maddie Cotterill

This Pride season marks 50 years since Parliament first voted to start legalising homosexuality and across the UK, Prides will be marching with a message of hope, acceptance, activism and love.

Ahead of the London parade on July 8, 2017, Pride in London and WCRS have launched a multi-media campaign, celebrating love in all its forms. This ‘Love Happens Here’ campaign will play out in two phases; ‘Hate’ and ‘Love’.

  • The first phase draws attention to the rising problem of anti-LGBT+ hate crime in the London with Guerrilla-style fly-postering across the city, a covert take-over of Wi-Fi networks, statistic led taxi-tops and an event, which all tell stories aimed to raise awareness of the ongoing prevalence of prejudice
  • On June 23, 2017, the second ‘Love’ phase of the campaign will launch, which sees the stories of hate crime replaced with ones of love, showing London that ‘Love Happens Here’

Alison Camps, co-chairman of Pride in London, said “This is the biggest campaign that we at Pride in London have ever undertaken. At a time when anti-LGBT+ hate crime continues to rise in London, it’s vital that we highlight this problem and encourage all those affected to report it to the Met police. But, crucially, this campaign also allows us to look forward with hope, telling the incredible stories of love that make London the thriving and welcoming city we all know. We’re phenomenally grateful to the media owners, production companies and agencies who have donated their time and resources to make this ambitious campaign possible.”

Pride’s message is a positive and inclusive rallying cry to everyone that it’s never too late to reconcile and to highlight this and celebrate the upcoming Pride season, Pride in London and Channel 4 have also partnered together in an industry first on a series of LGBT+ programming. From June 24, 2017, four LGBT+ themed adverts – created by WCRS and directed by Fred Scott at Pulse Films – will be aired during every Channel 4 programme, each representing different parts of the community – one of the adverts will also run as a 90” across cinema during the campaign period, Ed.

The campaign will also see OOH sites across the city (including fly-posters, large format OOH and the London Underground kindly donated by Jack Agency, Outdoor Plus, Clear Channel, 8 Outdoor, Kong Outdoor, Primesight, Media Circus, Ocean Outdoor, Outdoor Plus, Urban Vision, ECNLive, Verifone and Exterion Media) filled with stories of love, sourced from diverse members of the LGBT+ community.

Each story has been beautifully illustrated in posters created by more than 30 illustrators and artists, who donated their time for free to the campaign. These ‘Love Happens Here’ prints will also be available from the Tate as part of their Queer Britain season.

Ross Neil, Executive Creative Director at WCRS told us “It’s difficult to fully appreciate the amount of love and pride that has gone into this campaign until you see the list of credits of all those who gave their time and talents to make this happen. This is a campaign that started from a negative place of hatred and has blossomed into a full technicolour, full volume, inclusive expression of love. The greatness of the creative is matched only by the sheer scale of companies and individuals.”

To mark the start of the festival, Ocean Outdoor have also partnered with Pride in London for a love domination at Westfield Stratford on Saturday June 24, 2017. The ‘Love Happens Here’ campaign will also go global with interactive DOOH sites in New York at locations in Times Square, and sites wishing people a great World Pride in Madrid at Gatwick & Stansted airports.
To spread the love even further, Pride in London is calling on Londoners to contribute to the campaign by sharing their own stories of love, here.


Leave a Reply