Title	THE GUY WHO CUT EVERYTHING IN HALF
Brand	DEUTSCHER ANWALTVEREIN
Product/Service	LEGAL ADVICE (GERMAN BAR ASSOCIATION)
Category	B03. Use of Social Platform(s) in a Promotional Campaign
Entrant Company	SERVICEPLAN Munich, GERMANY
Advertising Agency	SERVICEPLAN Munich, GERMANY
Advertising Agency 2	PLAN.NET Munich, GERMANY

Name	Company	Position
Alexander Schill	Serviceplan	Chief Creative Officer
Benedikt Goettert	Serviceplan	Executive Creative Director
Philipp Stute	Serviceplan	Copywriter
Julius Steffens	Serviceplan	Art Director
Frank Meinke	Serviceplan	Account Supervisor
Christine Breithaupt	Serviceplan	Account Supervisor
Christina Mayer	Serviceplan	Account Supervisor
Nicolas Diekmann	Serviceplan	Account Supervisor
Florian Panier	Serviceplan	Executive Creative Producer
Dennis Fritz	Serviceplan	Senior Motion Designer
Franz Roeppischer	Serviceplan	Creative Innovation Director
Lorenz Langgartner	Serviceplan	Creative Innovation Director

The Brief

In Germany a divorce can cost you up to 50% of your belongings. Consulting a lawyer and getting a prenuptial agreement before your wedding can help to prevent that. But hardly anybody in our target audience of young couples in Germany knew, cared or even talked about this problem. The German Bar Association, representing 66,000 lawyers, wanted to change that. So we transformed the lawyers' message into a fascinating viral story for a young audience that both introduced them to the subject of prenuptial agreements and activated them to actually consult a lawyer

Campaign Success

Phase 1: Laying out the bait We started our viral campaign by placing “Martin G.’s” auctions on ebay and embedding the YouTube video. We monitored Social Media to detect audience reactions. For two days nothing happend. Then one of the auctions was posted by a user on reddit and from there took off to social and traditional media. Within days the whole world talked about the guy who cut everything in half. Phase 2: Harvest We waited until worldwide attention for our story reached its peak. Then we revealed the stunt with a press conference. This led to a second wave of attention for our concern, especially in Germany. Most news media spread our message word by word. This led to a massive increase of visits on our website, where people foung free legal advice on prenuptial agreements and reasons why to consult a lawyer before getting married.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

Our story made it around the world – two times! First “Martin G.” hit the news and social media around the world. And after we revealed the story in a press conference and on the German Bar Associations’ online portal , we gained a second wave of media attention. This time our message was spread word by word: prenuptials can prevent cases like that of “Martin G.”! Overview of what we achieved: - traffic on client’s online platform increased by 173% during campaign - > 7 million YouTube views - our message made it to news in 151 countries - almost 17 million euros earned media - most talked about topic an all social platforms during the campaign

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

Our task was encouraging young couples to consult a lawyer and get a prenuptial agreement before getting married. We had to deal with two challenges: Our message was not part of our target groups everyday lives and – as research showed – most of them had never consulted a lawyer at all before. So we had to create a campaign that both introduced the target audience to the subject of prenuptial agreements and activated them to actually consult a lawyer – with a total budget of only 5,000 €. To match this goal our campaign comprised two stages: First we generated worldwide attention on social media through a viral campaign using eBay auctions and a YouTube video. Then we revealed the stunt and used the attention to bring our target audience in direct contact with lawyers by customised banners on every auction that directly led to the German Bar Associations’ website.