World Smile Day®, held annually on the first Friday in October, is always Smile Train’s biggest tentpole moment for raising awareness of our brand and of the importance of making high-quality, local cleft care accessible to all. This year, we decided our global campaign theme would be “Lighting up the World with Smiles.” To that end, we set out to light up as many historic landmarks around the world as possible, with the goal of breaking an existing Guinness World Records title for the “Most Landmarks Illuminated in 24 Hours.”
Specifically, our campaign objectives included:
Breaking an existing Guinness World Records (GWR) title for the “most landmarks illuminated in 24 hours”
Generating widespread media coverage by leveraging a celebrity ambassador to help us light up the Empire State Building (ESB)
Increasing social media impressions by more than 50% from World Smile Day 2023
Raising awareness of people with facial differences and their needs, while promoting Smile Train’s brand and sustainable model
Since our international headquarters is based in New York City, we aimed to light up the bulk of the >57 landmarks locally. To that end, we assigned members of our HQ communications team to secure a certain number of landmarks each, however they could: We got many landmarks to participate via email or phone call, but often we had to go door-to-door to convince the appropriate decision maker in person. Our international colleagues employed a similar strategy, and most landmarks were secured at little to no cost.
Our PR/comms strategy was to garner media coverage wherever landmarks would be lit up. For social media, we commissioned a 3D-animated video to promote the campaign on Instagram, Facebook, X, and LinkedIn. Finally, our digital marketing teams built a landing page with an interactive map of all the lightings and included an “Add Yours” button for people to promote the campaign on their own Instagram pages by posting pictures of themselves in a custom-made frame.
About a month out from World Smile Day®, we had only secured about two dozen landmarks—far short of our goal. We avoided mentioning our record pursuit in promotional materials before World Smile Day® and developed two versions of nearly all post-World Smile Day® comms—one for if we set the record, another for if we did not—to be prepared for either scenario.
But we remained undeterred. In the months leading up to the campaign, we frequently communicated with the Guinness World Records team to ensure we understood the rules and guidelines, including which buildings would qualify and how to properly document each lighting.
A few weeks out from World Smile Day®, we received some good news: The Empire State Building confirmed our request to participate. We quickly recruited celebrity Liz Gillies to join our President & CEO at the lighting ceremony and planned a press event at the ESB’s lighting room for the morning of Oct. 4.
For the final execution phase, we enlisted our global colleagues to identify eligible sites, spanning national landmark registers, the National Register of Historic Places, and UNESCO World Heritage sites, each containing hundreds of potential locations. We also brought portable blue lights to key sites that were unable to light up on their own and organized local volunteers to serve as witnesses on-site. In parallel, we coordinated with cross-functional teams to develop a process for uploading over 11 hours of video footage and other required evidence.
In the end, our efforts proved fruitful: our staff and over 140 volunteers around the world helped illuminate 64 landmarks in Smile Train blue—literally lighting up the world with smiles and officially setting a new Guinness World Records title. We also comfortably surpassed our other KPIs for the campaign:
