Our challenge was motivating our target audience to proactively recognize people in their lives with seemingly very little benefit to themselves. We had to demonstrate that the emotional reward was not simply in the creation of a list of people you wanted to thank but actually acting on that intention. To bring this to life, we created five documentary films that showed people making their own ThankList and then acting upon it. From there, viewers were directed to ThankList.com to create their own written ThankList and quickly and easily make a unique, personalized film that they could then share on Facebook. Finally, as another way of participating, we asked people to simply share their ThankList on Twitter or visually on Instagram with the hashtag: #thanklist.

We created five short, emotional “ThankList” documentaries with Oscar-winning filmmaker Barbara Kopple. The powerful stories within these videos helped them get picked up immediately by the press (and viewed by our target audience) and helped drive viewers to ThankList.com. The site is an immersive, interactive experience that allowed users to create their own permanent ThankLists as well as personalized ThankList animated videos. Those videos were then shared on Facebook where they helped drive even more of our intended audience to ThankList.com. So far, the experience has racked up almost 200 million PR impressions. To date, thousands of people have used the #thanklist hashtag, added their ThankLists to the site and made and shared personalized, animated ThankList videos. Needless to say, American Greetings is very thankful for the results.

The ThankList.com enables users to quickly and easily create and share a video thanklist to someone important in their lives, and in this way, change behavior to inspire more thankfulness. Among other key points:

• The site is an immersive, interactive experience that allowed users to create their own permanent ThankLists as well as personalized ThankList animated videos;

• The experience has racked up almost 200 million PR impressions, and thousands of people have used the #thanklist hashtag, added their ThankLists to the site and made and shared personalized, animated ThankList videos.