Title	THE AFD BLOCKER
Brand	DIE PARTEI
Product/Service	AFD-BLOCKER
Category	A07. Not-for-profit / Charity / Governemt
Entrant	SCHOLZ & FRIENDS HAMBURG, GERMANY
Idea Creation	SCHOLZ & FRIENDS HAMBURG, GERMANY
PR	DIE PARTEI Berlin, GERMANY
Production	DEEPBLUE NETWORKS Hamburg, GERMANY
Production 2	SCHOLZ & FRIENDS REALISATION HUB Hamburg, GERMANY
Production 3	SCHOLZ & FRIENDS Berlin, GERMANY

Name	Company	Position
Matthias Spaetgens	Scholz & Friends Berlin GmbH	Chief Creative Officer
Markus Daubenbüchel	Scholz & Friends Hamburg GmbH	Executive Creative Director
Tobias Ahrens	Scholz & Friends Hamburg GmbH	Executive Creative Director
Christian Fritsche	Scholz & Friends Hamburg GmbH	Creative Director
Johannes Milhoffer	Scholz & Friends Hamburg GmbH	Creative Director
Yigit Karagoz	Scholz & Friends Hamburg GmbH	Art Director
Jan Lederer	Scholz & Friends Hamburg GmbH	Art Director
Aditya Sunilkumar	Scholz & Friends Hamburg GmbH	Copywriter
Christian Dluhosch	Scholz & Friends Hamburg Gmbh	Account Manager
Kerstin Mende	Scholz & Friends Hamburg GmbH	Art Buyer
Joana Strohfahrt	Scholz & Friends Hamburg GmbH	Art Buyer
Axel Leyck	Scholz & Friends	Agency Producer
Daniel Klessig	Scholz & Friends Berlin GmbH	Cinematographer
Kristin Ammon	Scholz & Friends Berlin GmbH	Agency Producer
Pia Poehls	Scholz & Friends Hamburg GmbH	Agency Producer

Why is this work relevant for PR?

The AfD-Blocker was always intended to be more than “just” a means of self-protection against Nazi propaganda. Our goal was to scrutinize the at best questionable social media tactics of the AfD and spark a broad conversation about how right-wing extremists’ parties are influencing public opinion – and the decision making-process of young voters – with constant and omnipresent hate-mongering. At the same time, it was our strategic objective to highlight the anti-fascist and pro-European profile of the party Die PARTEI and make first voters aware of their responsibility for Europe before the EU election 2019.

Background

There’s an extremist right-wing party in the German parliament again: The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). And their strategy to use fake accounts and social bots just like the Jihadis and US President Donald Trump, has helped them misrepresent their numbers as well as their influence. It’s helped them not only reach more and more ignorant people but also dominate political discussions with their extreme ideologies. With their foolishness literally everywhere across the media landscape – the internet, social media, magazines, newspapers – people were finding it impossible to ignore their messaging. Someone had to take a stand and empower people with a way to reject the AfD and their ideologies.

Describe the creative idea (20% of vote)

Die PARTEI (The PARTY), set up as a satirical anti-establishment movement, took the lead. People needed an all-purpose tool for all channels to avoid the Nazi party, so they created the AfD-Blocker. Working like an ad-blocker, it suppresses everything about the AfD on your screen. For the analogue world, a set of templates was created, so the AfD could be covered up on newspapers, and even on the ballot of the recent EU elections as a PR stunt. All this, to make true the Party chairman, Martin Sonneborn’s words: A life without the AfD is possible.

Describe the PR strategy (30% of vote)

Our strategy was to create not only a tool for self-protection against Nazi propaganda, but also to create a critical public discussion about the ideology of the AfD. At the same time, it was our strategic objective to highlight the anti-fascist and pro-European profile of the party Die PARTEI and make first voters aware of their responsibility for Europe before the EU election 2019.

Describe the PR execution (20% of vote)

Our campaign started on the 13th of May and was kicked off with a press conference in Berlin in which our party chairman Martin Sonneborn introduced the AfD-Blocker to the German public. The AfD-Blocker was made available on the Chrome and Firefox Webstores, while the analogue version could be ordered on the website of Die PARTEI. The online video of the press conference was spread over social media channels, aired on radio and shown in TV.

List the results (30% of vote)

What started off small soon turned into something bigger: The AfD-Blocker became an indispensable everyday tool for the intelligent voter, the analogue blocker sold out in just two days, and the digital blocker was installed thousands of times. Fanatic developers even went on to develop the digital blocker for use on other channels like Facebook, free of charge. All in all, across online and offline channels, the message earned over 3 million media impressions! And then came the big moment: The EU election. Die PARTEI achieved their best result ever, becoming the third-strongest party among young first-time voters with double their MEP seats and gaining 2.4% of the vote in 2019, bettering their tally of 0.6% in 2014. But most importantly: the AfD failed to live up to every prediction.