'I'm not racist but …' is the most used introduction to say something racist.
Particularly on social media, people use this cliché to post racist comments and prejudices.
Anti-racism organisation Hand In Hand decided to open the debate.
They wanted to make people stop and think by launching an interactive movie.
If you disliked the woman's racist speech, you made the movie a few milliseconds shorter.
The more dislikes, the shorter the movie.
Until she says 'I'm not a racist.'
Period.
People could then share this message on their social media.
Within 2 hours, #iamnotracistbut became a trending topic on twitter. Within less than 24 hours, we gathered 35.000 dislikes to shorten the movie.
But most importantly, we started a lot of social media conversations about discrimination and racism.
In only 24 hours this resulted in:
more than 120.000 website visitors
coverage on every major Belgian news site
totalling 7.4 million media impressions
And Belgians were made aware of their own racist thoughts.
The Brief
By launching this interactive movie, we wanted to make people stop using the phrase 'I'm not racist, but'.
Execution
We invited people via Facebook and Twitter to dislike the 'I'm not racist, but...' speech from a woman on our website.
If you disliked the woman's racist speech, you made the movie a few milliseconds shorter.
So the more dislikes, the shorter the movie.
This way, the only words left were (after a few hours) 'I'm not a racist.'
Period.
People could then share this message on their social media and encourage others to fight racist statements as well.
People could then share this message on their social media.
Within 2 hours, #iamnotracistbut became a trending topic on twitter.
Within less than 24 hours, we gathered 35.000 dislikes to shorten the movie.
But most importantly, we started a lot of social media conversations about discrimination and racism.
In only 24 hours this resulted in:
more than 120.000 website visitors
coverage on every major Belgian news site
totalling 7.4 million media impressions
And Belgians were made aware of their own racist thoughts.
The Strategy
If you disliked the woman's racist speech, you made the movie a few milliseconds shorter.
The more dislikes, the shorter the movie.
Until she says 'I'm not a racist.' Period.