The story and the world created in the show were very familiar with the Italian audience. As a country with a recent history of hackers attacks, and our fair share of Anonymous campaigns, we knew our audience would have reacted and connected to the themes of the show, if brought to them in a believable way.

Our idea was simple but ambitious: to create a believable hackers attack on the Italian society, with a specific focus on celebrities and the world of show-business, and spread a simple message. Online, nobody is safe.

We knew that, for the campaign to work, we needed our audience and news and media outlets to become part of the story and tell it for us. We built the campaign around a few unique and impactful “attacks”, the chapters of our PR story, in a natural crescendo that could fuel the interest of our audience.

Over two weeks we built a crescendo of impactful activations to tell our story: a full-on hackers’ attack on Italian society, ready to leak VIP’s secrets.

The face of our campaign: a masked man, in the style of Anonymous and Mr.Robot, acting as a spokesperson for our fictional group of hackers.

Our first hack: a billboard in the center of Milan. By day, a regular ad from a cybersecurity company. By night, it was hacked through a projector to tease our incoming attack.

Our second hack: we delivered an unbranded package to influencers and media, asking them to join our cause.

Our third hack: a simulated social hacking of the most famous Italian celebrities that sparked spontaneous news coverage and word of mouth.

Our final hack: a simultaneous interruption of TV regular programming on 9 different channels, with a 30” message announcing the upcoming leak on our landing page.

“Studio Aperto”, one of Italy’s leading News Programs on public TV, covered the campaign with a 60 seconds newsflash, reaching almost 1 millions viewers.

Some of Italy’s most popular radio programs covered the story, also thanks to our mysterious recruiting package that we sent them.

More than 3 million people engaged through PR coverage, earned media and spontaneous conversation.

The social VIPs’ Hack totaled almost 6 million people in reach who commented, shared on the celebrities profile and ultimately believed our story.

Over 9 million people witnessed the simultaneous interruption on TV channels, and immediately spread the news online via Twitter and Facebook.

Ratings for Mr. Robot first episode on Premium reached 7.19% of total audience. (versus less than 1% of similar launches on Premium) with an increase of more than 700% above average.