Task: The media environment is becoming more and more cluttered. So in a world of blogs, Wikipedia and forums, Focus Magazine – Germany’s largest news magazine – decided to highlight the quality of its reporting by putting the focus back on solid, fact-based journalism.

Implementation: The FOCUS-CAMPUS CrapCrasher. Tired of bad or vacuous web pages? Don’t get mad – get shredding! Users simply enter a URL, then watch as the page is taken apart if the information it contains fails the CrapCrasher’s Facts Test. They can then either send the leftovers back to the author (a clear form of criticism), or mail them to their colleagues, fellow-students or friends. The CrapCrasher-Email also invites recipients to start shredding too.

Results: In the first two weeks, the page registered over 33,000 hits. During the test phase, no fewer than 1,780 physical letters were sent. The response was so strong that offline activities had to be stopped after just one week to prevent postal costs from skyrocketing. For FOCUS the viral campaign was more than just a complete success: as the very first online viral project of its type, it marked a premiere too.