Tie The Knot and the ACLU launched Give A Shit for Good in June 2019, a US digital campaign by The Martin Agency that turned the poop emoji into a $1
Tie The Knot and ACLU Turn the Poop Emoji Into an LGBTQ Rights Fundraiser
Give A Shit for Good is a June 2019 United States digital campaign created by The Martin Agency for Tie The Knot and the ACLU LGBT Project, in which each poop emoji pledged by a user represented a one-dollar donation to fund LGBTQ civil rights work.
The campaign launched during the 50th-anniversary period of WorldPride, a moment of heightened visibility for LGBTQ communities across the United States and globally. The Martin Agency anchored its activation to a press event and party held at The Tie Bar pop-up shop on Christopher Street in New York City — the historic block where the Stonewall uprising occurred a half-century earlier. That geographic and symbolic choice gave the campaign an immediate cultural weight that its irreverent emoji mechanic might otherwise have obscured. According to adsoftheworld.com, the initiative operated as a digital public interest effort with a single media asset, channelling the internet's most recognisable scatological symbol into a structured fundraising mechanism.
Users could pledge donations through a dedicated campaign website or via Facebook Messenger, lowering the friction of participation to a single emoji interaction. Jesse Tyler Ferguson, co-founder of Tie The Knot alongside Justin Mikita, promoted the campaign publicly on June 21, 2019, as reported by Adweek. George Takei also participated as a featured voice, extending the campaign's reach to established LGBTQ advocacy audiences. Proceeds flowed directly to the ACLU LGBT Project, connecting playful digital behaviour to institutional civil rights litigation in the United States. The campaign represents a continuation of the creative partnership between Tie The Knot and The Martin Agency, which previously collaborated on the 2015 Supreme Save the Date initiative. Clapboard rates Give A Shit for Good 64 out of 100.
Nonprofit digital advertising in the United States faced a structural tension in 2019 between authenticity and scale. According to callhub.io, online giving grew ten percent in 2019 across the United States, while nonprofit digital ad spending increased seventeen percent in the same period. That growth signalled a crowded attention environment in which straightforward donation appeals competed against each other with diminishing returns. The Martin Agency's strategy for Tie The Knot and the ACLU sidestepped that competition entirely by building the campaign around a cultural object — the poop emoji — that already commanded organic engagement.
The mechanic was deliberately low-barrier. Each emoji equalled one dollar, which meant participation required neither financial planning nor sustained commitment from the user. This structural decision reflected a broader insight about digital public interest campaigns: conversion rates improve when the cognitive and financial cost of a single action approaches zero. According to profound.com, digital represented a meaningful share of media spending among nonprofits in 2019, with smaller organisations allocating a substantial portion of their budgets to digital channels. The ACLU, one of the most recognised civil liberties organisations in the United States, provided institutional credibility that organisations such as the Human Rights Campaign and Lambda Legal also trade on in LGBTQ advocacy fundraising. Tie The Knot brought a consumer brand sensibility — founded in 2012 by Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Justin Mikita as a neckwear line that pledged a portion of each sale to marriage equality organisations, according to adsoftheworld.com — that neither a traditional nonprofit nor a pure advocacy body could replicate. Programmatic ads were directed at targeted audiences across the United States, layering paid distribution onto the organic celebrity amplification provided by Ferguson and Takei.
The Martin Agency built Give A Shit for Good around a single, universally legible symbol. The poop emoji required no translation, no lengthy explanation, and no emotional manipulation — qualities that distinguish it from the vast majority of public interest creative work produced in the United States in 2019. The creative logic was essentially documentary and social experiment in nature: what happens when you ask people to use a silly digital object for a serious civil rights purpose? The answer, structurally, was a campaign that generated its own editorial coverage simply by existing.
The decision to stage the launch event on Christopher Street in New York City was a creative choice as much as a logistical one. The Tie Bar pop-up shop placed the campaign's physical presence at the symbolic origin point of the modern LGBTQ rights movement in the United States, lending the otherwise lightweight emoji mechanic a layer of historical resonance. According to martinagency.com, The Martin Agency described this initiative as part of Tie The Knot's ongoing creative relationship with the agency, rooted in a shared commitment to LGBTQ advocacy communication. The campaign's documentary and social experiment qualities — real people, real donations, real celebrity participation — gave press outlets including Adweek a clear narrative hook that pure digital campaigns rarely provide. Production credits for Give A Shit for Good beyond The Martin Agency's agency role are not publicly documented in available sources. The campaign's single media asset, as noted by adsoftheworld.com, concentrated its creative argument into one digital execution rather than fragmenting attention across multiple formats, a discipline that strengthened rather than limited its public interest impact.
No verified performance data for Give A Shit for Good is publicly available. The ACLU and Tie The Knot have not released audited figures for total donations raised, emoji pledges counted, or digital reach generated by the June 2019 United States campaign. That absence of disclosed metrics is common among public interest digital activations where fundraising totals are either modest in absolute terms or bundled into broader annual giving figures.
What the structural evidence does support is a campaign well-positioned to perform above baseline for its category. The combination of a zero-friction donation mechanic, two high-profile celebrity participants in Jesse Tyler Ferguson and George Takei, a press event at a culturally significant location in New York City, and launch timing aligned with WorldPride's 50th anniversary created four independent amplification vectors operating simultaneously. According to callhub.io, online giving grew ten percent across the United States in 2019, meaning the campaign launched into a fundraising environment already trending upward. Coverage by Adweek on June 21, 2019, as reported by Adweek, provided earned media validation that extended the campaign's reach beyond its paid programmatic distribution. The Martin Agency's prior success with Tie The Knot — particularly the 2015 Supreme Save the Date campaign, which generated significant press coverage around the US Supreme Court's marriage equality deliberations according to aclu-nm.org — established a creative credibility that reduced the reputational risk of an unconventional mechanic. The Clapboard Score of 64 out of 100 reflects a campaign that executes its public interest brief with clarity and cultural intelligence but stops short of the measurable, documented impact that would elevate it further.
Give A Shit for Good is a June 2019 United States digital campaign created by The Martin Agency for Tie The Knot and the ACLU LGBT Project. Each poop emoji pledged by a user represented a one-dollar donation to fund LGBTQ civil rights work. The campaign launched during WorldPride's 50th-anniversary period in New York City, as reported by adsoftheworld.com.
Users pledged donations via a campaign website or Facebook Messenger. Each poop emoji submitted represented a one-dollar contribution to the ACLU LGBT Project in the United States. The low-friction structure — one emoji, one dollar — was designed to maximise participation by reducing the cognitive and financial cost of a single donation action, according to Adweek.
Jesse Tyler Ferguson and George Takei were featured participants. Ferguson, co-founder of Tie The Knot alongside Justin Mikita, promoted the campaign publicly on June 21, 2019. Takei extended reach to established LGBTQ advocacy audiences. Both figures provided organic amplification that complemented the campaign's programmatic digital distribution across the United States.
WorldPride 2019 marked the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, making it the highest-visibility moment for LGBTQ communities in the United States that year. The Martin Agency staged the campaign launch on Christopher Street in New York City, the historic site of Stonewall, connecting the emoji mechanic to a moment of genuine cultural and civil rights significance, per martinagency.com.
Tie The Knot was founded in 2012 by Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Justin Mikita as a neckwear line pledging a portion of each sale to marriage equality organisations, according to adsoftheworld.com. The brand previously partnered with The Martin Agency on the 2015 Supreme Save the Date initiative, which allowed same-sex couples to send customised wedding invitations to US Supreme Court justices during marriage equality deliberations.
Give A Shit for Good received a Clapboard Score of 64 out of 100. The score reflects a public interest campaign that executes its creative brief with cultural intelligence and structural clarity. Its emoji-based mechanic and celebrity participation are strengths, though the absence of publicly verified performance data limits assessment of its documented real-world fundraising impact in the United States.
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