Every Veterans Day, a hundred thousand people tweet, “Thank you for your service.” And while these are well-meaning words, veterans need more meaningful action. So Veterans United, the nation’s leading VA home loan provider, was determined to give it to them.

Every time someone tweeted, “Thank you for your service,” unbeknownst to them, Veterans United backed up their words with $25 to pay off veterans’ mortgages. With the help of some celebrity cameos, we were able to fully pay off 11 homes, $2.3 million in total. All in a humble effort to repay the debts of those we’re forever indebted to.

The campaign was covered by several primetime news segments and even honored as a World Changing Idea.

Changing lives, live.

As the organic, unprompted tweets began paying off homes, we began delivering the surprise news in real time. We shot, edited, finished, and released all 11 films on a rolling basis throughout Veterans Day.

The site

We custom-built a site to tally the number of homes paid off in real time so Americans could follow along with their progress.

The full film

With did a deep dive into veteran sentiment around the phrase “thank you for your service,” and with the help of veteran advocates and celebrities like Gary Sinise and Joe Mantegna, we were later able to say thank you in a whole new way.

Press

The campaign was covered nationwide by a total of 266 news sources, featured on several primetime nightly news segments including NBC, MSNBC, CNN, and ABC and— in total— garnered more than 300 million impressions. It was later honored by Fast Company as one of their World Changing Ideas.