Pink Shirt Day
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Invigorating a beloved campaign
Pink Shirt Day is a national bullying prevention campaign with a strong focus on reducing homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying. The campaign is run by Mental Health Foundation New Zealand (MHFNZ) each year in the middle of May.
The aim is to reduce bullying in schools, workplaces and community settings across the motu by celebrating diversity, spreading kindness, and promoting positive social relationships.
On Pink Shirt Day, the public are encouraged to wear a pink shirt to raise funds and to actively create environments where all people feel safe, valued and respected – regardless of age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, ability, or cultural background.


A new direction
While Pink Shirt Day has been running for a number of years in Aotearoa, there was still a need to build awareness of and participation in the day and the wider kaupapa of reducing bullying all year round.
Each organisation comes to us at different stages of creative ideation. With many Pink Shirt Days behind them, we discussed with the team what they loved about previous campaigns, and what they’d like to do differently in 2024. Overall, there was a desire to bring some realism and honesty into the campaign storytelling.


Tapping into emotion
For the 2024 campaign we knew we needed to continue to build awareness of and participation in Pink Shirt Day and the kaupapa with an emotive hero video. Beyond Pink Shirt Day, we also wanted to inform audiences about preventing bullying all year round, and help educate audiences on how they can do that as an ‘Everyday Upstander’.



When it came to the hero video for the campaign, some initial strategic thinking was already in place. Leaning into the strengths-based nature of the kaupapa, the Mental Health Foundation were keen to centre the video around a powerful question: ‘what would it have meant to have someone stand up for you?’
We loved the potential this question had to be able to cut to the heart of what Pink Shirt Day represents.

Simple, human centred, supportive.
When we thought about our own responses to that same question – “what would have meant to have someone stand up for you?” – it instantly uncovered some rich answers. Many of us had our own experiences of bullying and understood the power of being an upstander.
We knew that there would be real strength in a simple, focussed creative approach to the campaign video, one which foregrounded the honesty of each response.


We landed on a single-minded visual proposition to really centre what Pink Shirt Day is about: a central moving motif to visually unpack the effect of a network of Upstanders. The concept plays on the contrast between being alone and being supported by many people. The tone is slow, concentrated, and transitions to a final moment that is positive and action-focussed.
We drew on a diversity of talent to ensure we foregrounded authentic answers to that same question, and the script was constructed around each of these answers. As the camera moves backwards in one long shot focusing on our central protagonist, each voice speaks to the power of the support and solidarity of others to combat bullying.


Results that resource the work
We know that the overall impact of this campaign is beyond numbers. But we know that this year was the biggest year yet for the Pink Shirt Day campaign in Aotearoa.
Latest research also shows that this year’s Pink Shirt Day has had an extraordinary reach. Some highlights include the fact that 2024 was Pink Shirt Day’s biggest fundraising year yet and there were 40,000 tee shirts sold throughout the campaign. The campaign period also saw 5million video views and 136,000 website visits.
Even more importantly, a whopping 85% of New Zealanders are aware of Pink Shirt Day and 73% agree it has helped them do something when they witness bullying, which we couldn’t be happier about.
