With a combination of channel and keyword targeting 10 spots were shown as unskippable ads in front of over 100 racist videos on YouTube. All of them disproved common prejudices with hard facts, surprising revelations or humor and anticipated the content of the following videos. Additionally, terrible Google Ad words were booked to lead the users to the spots of the refugees. So the racists where confronted with their biggest fear for the first time and face to face. At the end of each video the refugee appealed to better watch his or her story instead of listening to more prejudice. With the button “Skip prejudice” the viewer was led to the story of the particular refugee and invited to change his thoughts about their – till then – objects of hate.
The news of courageous refugees trolling nazi content?went viral – already on the second day they were published. In only one week the campaign got 160.358.977* views on different news platforms and blogs. Furthermore 1.213.059* social shares could be reached. We also achieved 12.2 million in earned media. But even better: “Refugees welcome” received an unbelievable boost of 723%* in donations that will be used to integrate many more refugees into the German communities and culture.
(*status end of April 2016)
This idea was made possible thanks to the innovative use of media, keyword and channel marketing. The campaign-mechanism of „Search racism. Find truth.“ is based on in-depth research of over 1500 right-wing keywords used through Google search. The top 100 had been combined to cover all possible search results. The Google Ads linked the user directly to a specific YouTube pre-roll that pretended to be what he was looking for, but wasn’t. The 10 different unskippable ads had to be watched, prior seeing the content originally requested. In addition we not only targeted relevant right-wing YouTube channels, we identified.
With a combination of channel and keyword targeting 10 spots were shown as unskippable ads in front of over 100 racist videos on YouTube. All of them disproved common prejudices with hard facts, surprising revelations or humor and anticipated the content of the following videos. For instance, when searching for Lutz Bachmann, the German right-wing leader of Pegida, viewers were confronted by Arif from Syria, who did away with prejudices. Other pre-roll ads showed that refugees put a lot of effort into learning the local language or debunk false statistics. Additionally, Google Ad words were booked to lead the users to the spots of our refugees. So the racists where confronted with their biggest fear for the first time. And they realized that there is nothing to be afraid of or hateful about, as the refugees are just normal people like us.