The idea was that courageous refugees stand up against the digital hate preachers: right before the racist videos on YouTube. Unskippable pre roll ads should leave right-wing extremists with no choice but to stop and think about the refugees and their arguments. So we disturbed them on their way to consume racist material by giving them the chance to watch the story of a refugee instead of listening to more prejudices and hate. Additionally, we booked terrible Google Ad words to lead the viewer directly to the stories of the refugees.

With a combination of channel and keyword targeting 10 spots were shown as unskippable ads in front of over 100 racist videos on YouTube. All of them disproved common prejudices with hard facts, surprising revelations or humor and anticipated the content of the following videos. Additionally, terrible Google Ad words were booked to lead the users to the spots of the refugees. So the racists where confronted with their biggest fear for the first time and face to face. At the end of each video the refugee appealed to better watch his or her story instead of listening to more prejudice. With the button “Skip prejudice” the viewer was led to the story of the particular refugee and invited to change his thoughts about their – till then – objects of hate.

The news of courageous refugees trolling nazi content?went viral – already on the second day they were published. In only one week the campaign got 160.358.977* views on different news platforms and blogs. Furthermore 1.213.059* social shares could be reached. We also achieved 12.2 million in earned media. But even better: “Refugees welcome” received an unbelievable boost of 723%* in donations that will be used to integrate many more refugees into the German communities and culture.

(*status end of April 2016)