BURN RACIST GIGA

TitleBURN RACIST GIGA
BrandROLLING STONE MAGAZINE ITALIA
Product/ServiceROLLING STONE
Category A06. Data / Insight
Entrant SERVICEPLAN ITALIA Milan, ITALY
Idea Creation SERVICEPLAN ITALIA Milan, ITALY
Media Placement MEDIAPLUS Milan, ITALY
Production OLTREFARGO Turin, ITALY
Additional Company PLAN.NET Milan, ITALY
Additional Company 2 DEVELON Altavilla, ITALY
Credits
Name Company Position
Oliver Palmer Serviceplan Italia Srl Executive Creative Director
Pas Frezza Serviceplan Italia Srl Creative Director
Luca Iannucci Serviceplan Italia Srl Creative Director
Max Bratti Serviceplan Italia Srl Art Director
Matteo Busti Plan.Net Italia Art Director
Vittorio Giannotti Serviceplan Italia Srl Copywriter
Franz Röppischer Serviceplan Munich Innovation creative director
Lorenz Langgartner Serviceplan Munich Innovation creative director

Background

Italy has been flooded by a deluge of racism in recent years. It is particularly evident on social media platforms where videos, comments and attitudes expressing increasing hostility towards immigrants can be found on far-right sites worryingly, the number of videos with racist content, xenophobic comments and hostile attitudes aimed at immigrants are on the rise, and have made social networks an increasingly toxic environment since xenophobes only need an internet connection to share their extremist views. Rolling Stone Italia has previously taken a stand against racism with its iconic, Noi non stiamo con Salvini cover, a special issue to combat the anti-immigrant views of Italy’s far-right ex-Interior Minister, Matteo Salvini.

Describe the creative idea

In an unprecedented way, the Burn Racist Giga campaign blocked the data of extremist viewing far-right materials.

Describe the strategy

The campaign was designed to target the main tool used by racist to spread anti-immigrant views online in Italy, their data connection. It should be stressed that in Italy 98% of people have limited mobile data, on average 6 Gigabytes for month.

Describe the execution

RS lured racists to a fake site full of popular racist videos. The mini-site, called riprendiamocisubito.com, was containing videos with secretly increased file size. Watching these videos burns up to 40 times more mobile data. The website was advertised on social media, through a Facebook campaign, targeting far-right groups and was only available on a smartphone o tablet, and users could only view the videos using their data connection (they could not use Wi-Fi). It should be stressed that in Italy 98% of people have limited mobile data, on average 6 Gigabytes for month. So, the custom video player and its data rate massively increased allowed us to burn as much data as fast as possible, burning through viewers’ data in minutes and taking them offline.

List the results

The hacktivism kept hundreds of racist away from social media platforms for a significant period, burning through over 5000 gigabytes and cleaning up the Internet by taking more than 800 racist offline. Without their monthly data, far-right extremist was not able to get back online and spew their hate with extremist comments and videos. When the stunt was revealed, Rolling Stone Magazine was celebrated all over italian social media, receiving 28 MIO contacts and increasing its traffic over 1500%.