Two months before the presidential elections in Romania an overwhelming majority was too apathetic to care about politics. 67.6% of the population declared it had no intention to vote.

In our creative PR campaign we wanted to underline the importance of going to vote by showing what can happen if the faith of the nation is left to indifference.

We started the PR campaign with strong video content placed online and pitched to a few key TV stations for pro-bono broadcasting.

“What if our ancestors didn’t show up for the crucial moments in our history?” – this was the main message. The videos showed two of our most beloved kings alone on the battlefield, learning that their brave men didn’t show up due to ridiculous excuses - we used actual quotes of contemporary people who decline going to vote.

The videos went viral and more TV stations asked to broadcast them.

We did an outdoor stunt, changing the names of a few main streets in Bucharest, from Romanian heroes’ names to Ottoman rulers’ names.

We involved A-lister journalists and online influencers, pitching them the idea, leading to public debates and talk shows based on this topic.

With 15 Romanian TV channels asking to broadcast the campaign (a total of 9 hours broadcast, all earned) and all the online actions, we’ve achieved 18 million impressions, which represents almost the entire population of Romania. But most of all, we helped overturn the percentage – 62% of the population showed up and voted!

We based our campaign on the ridiculous excuses people use for not coming to vote, depicting a different course of history, as if Romania would have been conquered by a neighboring power.

The videos became an instant viral.

We concentrated big firepower in the online, basing our efforts on social media and content creators.

We’ve reached out and convinced A-listers of the Romanian online to close their blogs and websites, promoting the message “Today I’m voting, not just commenting”.

On the vote day we prompted people to change their profile on Facebook with the proof of voting – the stamp.

Number of voters: 62% of the Romanian electorate voted (this hasn’t happened since 2004 and studies estimated that this election will have the lowest turnout in history)

Total reach: over 4 million people

Over 100.000 users engaged directly with the Facebook page & event

Hundreds of thousands more shared or re-uploaded our clips

Online video impact: over 550.000 views (not including re-uploads)

Vloggers and other content creators made spoof or follow-up videos inspired by our clips (some reached more than 100.000 views)

In the second vote round, one of the two candidates shared our video. He is now the President.