Pharrell Williams has taken the world by storm with his most played single "Happy"! The song has even landed an official holiday with the United Nations Foundation on March 20th as International Day of Happiness! The goal for this Holiday was to bring happiness to everyone for a day. Well, you know that I like challenges, and I actually base most of my creations around goals that the United Nations have deemed a great problem or my own. As a producer myself I've always looked up to Pharrell as a musician. He has made more hits than you can name, and I bet he has something to do with one of your favorite songs. With that said, March 20th could not have been a more perfect reason for me to spread happiness to my college campus! I teamed up with Tiger Press, a multimedia power on the campus of Tuskegee University, to use their Instagram as a medium to spread the "Happy Bug" around campus the fastest. I started with this campaign video on March 19th:
The campaign promotion video made a significant amount of likes, which shocked me because my campus can be a little weak on participation, unfortunately. The numbers looked promising and that night I decided that I will spread happiness to the campus and get people involved, no matter what. So the next morning I woke up and posted this video to peek peoples interest in making their own videos:
That video made another great amount of likes, and I was so ready to start seeing people jump in and make their own videos... Well a few hours passed, and I didn't see any activity. I thought to myself, "Maybe the campus needs to see more students participating.." I decided to post another one of my pre-made videos, thanks to Tiger Press for gathering a few clips prior.
And then it happened! I heard the Instagram videos being played in a room next to mine, and I decided to go check out who was playing the videos. When I entered the room, there were four girls sitting and smiling. This made it easy for me to just come right out and say, "Who wants to do a happy dance for the International Day of Happiness"? A bit confused they asked what they had to do, and I gave them the idea of what the happy dance was, they took it and made it their own!
I saw how happy the girls were after only giving me 15 seconds of happiness, and I decided that I would just bring happiness wherever I went that day! So, I did something I rarely do, I went to go socialize with anyone I felt needed the happiness.
The word started getting out about the International Day of Happiness, and the campus was all over the Tiger Press Instagram liking, and sharing the videos with their friends. We even had a few celebrity guest on campus that decided to join in on the fun! The creators of the NAE NAE decided to give their share of happiness!
And then... The greatest part of the day! People started making their own videos at home to share with everyone!
The happiness started spreading in more ways then I originally realized.. People were having a great time observing other people having a great time. They were laughing, and smiling while watching the videos! Once I realized this I decided to turn up the campaign! I posted another pre-made video and decided to get more people involved with making videos!
The campus was excited to see something positive spreading around the community, and more people made their own videos! Some videos of which I can't post here because they have a privacy setting on their Instagram's.
At the end of the day, I learned that happiness is indeed contagious, and it only takes one person to spread a small amount of it, for it to reach many.