If today's cultural choices are available everywhere, our cultural freedom is threatened.

Algorithms are everywhere in our lives and guide our cultural choices. They decide what we read, watch, discover, like & buy.

They are so powerful that they guide us into bubbles where we see only a part of what culture really is. And this can lead to extremely dangerous mindsets & behaviours such as addiction, polarization, radicalization…

Fnac, the iconic culture store in France that has been fighting for open-mindedness & curiosity since 1954 believes we need to start the fight for cultural freedom.

The brand decided to tackle the problem by disrupting the algorithm weapons: their recommendation patterns.

When it comes to culture, algorithms are driving our choices. For instance, 80% of what people planned to watch on Netflix is based on algorithm recommendations. We are completely losing our free will.

To fight this dangerous pattern, we decided to create the first anti personalization campaign, using data to serve content at the opposite of what people are supposed to like & buy.

This was the opposite of traditional digital advertising campaigns which are supposed to be as successful as possible.

The strategy was to create the first anti personalization campaign to break the bubbles which algorithms put people in.

For that, we created a digital campaign which had the least chance of performing. But the maximum chance is to make people discover something unexpected.

The banners were based on data profiles to serve cultural things that had only 2% to be liked… according to algorithm recommendations.

Based on real data profiles from publisher ad servers, we flipped around the algorithm recommendation mechanism to select & serve contents that people had only 2% chances to like. At the opposite of the traditional algorithm mechanism.

The campaign pushed the banners along people's daily digital journey i.e. news & culture websites.

We also set up a Twitter bot to push tweets with cultural content at the opposite of what people like & share on the social network.

- 1 million impressions with the digital banners

- More than 4000 visits to the unrecommended by algo Twitter account in just 2 days

A record engagement rate (like, share, start a conversation...): 35,7%

= X 1800 compared to the cultural good industry average

= X 715 compared to other sector averages

Click-through rate from Twitter posts to Fnac website: 12,4%

Click-through rate from display banners to Fnac website: + 300% compared to campaign average