How Zynga Celebrated Pride Month and Why Employee Inclusivity Matters
Celebrating Pride Month at work is now a mainstream practice and an important way to show support for the LGBTQ+ community. June 2021 saw arguably the most widely celebrated Pride Month in its history, with major brands around the world showing their support for the culture. This wasn’t just a case of creating a rainbow-colored logo for a month and calling it a day. There were activations, ad campaigns, and even employee events that all called to change the conversation about issues very important to the community.
Zynga is one such company that pledged to go above and beyond to show its support. You may not know the name, but you almost certainly know some of its hit games that include Farmville, Words With Friends, and CSR2.
In an industry known for its lack of diversity, Zynga has been unapologetically supportive of minority groups, such as the LGBTQ+ community, and its company culture has been increasing its focus on breaking down barriers for race, gender, and sexual orientation. And who better than Zynga’s own employees to speak about this during Pride Month.
#PlayWithPride Meets candid conversations
Zynga’s #PlayWithPride initiative, the first-ever for the company (but by no means the last), immediately hit the headlines with the launch of a partnership between High Heels!, a hit hyper-casual game, and Kenneth Cole. Players were able to play with pride as they outfit their character and strut the virtual runway in products from the Kenneth Cole PRIDE 2021 collection. For every PRIDE product purchased on kennethcole.com, a percentage of net sales was donated to The Mental Health Coalition.
Candid Conversations with Zynga Employees
Beyond that, Zynga turned to its own company culture to create pride-focused video content featuring some of their own employees. And tapping Cinebody was the logical next step for Luiz Whitney (He/Him/His), Director, Internal Communications & Employer Branding for Zynga.
“We’d seen how successful Cinebody could be utilized to create employee videos,” said Whitney, “and we knew it would be ideal for this purpose. We’d never created a video like this before, and so easy onboarding and fast access to the footage was essential.”
Why Employee Inclusivity Matters
Indeed, all it took was one link that was sent out to Zynga employees around the world in mid-May, with simple instructions to film their own experiences and perspectives laid out in the shot list (something that makes content creation like this a breeze). What does Pride Month mean to them and employee communication as a whole? How does it impact the gaming world? How is Pride Month not only celebrated, but embraced at Zynga?
Zynga values the importance of employee communication and actively promotes a culture of inclusivity and celebration of diversity, showing how to celebrate Pride Month in a meaningful way.
Looking Ahead
The footage came rolling in from employees living as far away as Turkey and England, and as it could be accessed and put into post-production for editing almost immediately, turnaround was fast. The end result is a video that encourages self-acceptance at Zynga (and everywhere else), and puts Zynga in the spotlight as a company daring to be different at a critical time. And with the playfulness of its own animations peppered in, the video has a charm that makes it even more engaging.
Let’s hope that next year, more companies reach out to their own employees to help support LGBTQ+ initiatives.
