Title	REMEMBER. CORRECTING MEMORY ERRORS.
Brand	AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU MEMORIAL AND MUSEUM
Product/Service	REMEMBER APP
Category	C01. Use of Digital Platforms
Entrant	FCB WARSAW Warsaw, POLAND
Idea Creation	FCB WARSAW Warsaw, POLAND
Additional Company	MINTMEDIA Warsaw, POLAND
Additional Company 2	MACOSCOPE Warsaw, POLAND

Name	Company	Position
Malgorzata Drozdowska	FCB Warsaw	Creative Director
Agnieszka Klimczak	FCB Warsaw	Creative Director
Czeslaw Plawgo	FCB Warsaw	senior copywriter
Wojtek Szpor	FCB Warsaw	senior art director
Agnieszka Heidrich	FCB Warsaw	New Business Director

The Campaign

After analysing the history of the recurrence of the expression “polish death camps”, we realized that, what is often seen as a diplomatic scandal, most of the times is just a simple mistake, made out of haste or lack of knowledge, a mistake that later on echoes to the wider public and is repeated as a fact, falsifying the collective memory. That’s why we decided to address those, whose word choice has the biggest impact on broad audiences – the journalists. We created a special plug-in application for the most popular text editors used by journalists - “Remember”. The app works as a spellchecker, highlighting just one mistake – the phrase “polish death camp” or “polish extermination camp” and suggesting the historically correct expression.

Creative Execution

We developed the plug-in application for both Mac and PC’s text editors commonly used by the journalists, in 16 languages – all the languages of Auschwitz Museum guides. We also set up a webpage correctmistakes.auschwitz.org, where the application was available for the free download, allowing the public for the direct intervention, whenever the mistake was spotted. Tuesday the 16th, Auschwitz Museum sent to journalists of 300 different media outlets around the world the e-mail with “Remember” application, together with the letter from the director of the Auschwitz Museum, a link to the webpage and the short movie introducing the application. The reaction was immediate and overwhelming.

Results

The app provoked a true global reaction: supporting and encouraging media coverage from all corners of the globe – 220 different media outlets from BBC news and The Independent, to The Heertz and The Hindu, generated 67.000.000 media impressions globally and started unprecedented conversation about this erroneous expression with 35.000.000 social media impressions and 19.600.000 Twitter accounts reached. All organic. The response was so overwhelming, that the Polish government decided to make the application a new diplomatic tool to be used for interventions made by Polish Embassies around the world, commissioning the development of the application in additional 10 languages. The first successful interventions of Polish Embassies, supported by individual readers prompting the use of the application (CBC Vancouver, De Standaard, The Independent, Bergamo Post), let us believe that this tool will eventually prevent this mistake from recurring.

“Remember” campaign with a simple e-mailing adressed one of the most painful misunderstandings regarding Polish history: „the Polish death camps” controversy. It’s a misleading and offensive for Poles phrase, repeated for years by international media, suggesting that Poland is responsible for the Nazi atrocities committed on Polish soil. By targeting directly a very demanding audience – the journalists, we found a new and suprisingly efficient way to talk to those who spread this offensive mistake and win them to our case - one by one and word by word.

The Auschwitz Museum, the entity that for years was advocating the cause, even persuading UNESCO to officially change the name of the Memorial to “German Nazi Extermination Camp“, instead of sending "press release" following 71th Anniversary of Camp Liberation, selected the media outlets from all over the world, which in the past had been using the erroneous expression, and sent the “Remember” application directly to their journalists.