In the run-up to the European elections, the European Parliament was organising a TEDx-like conference in Paris about (un)employment in Europe, with a limited number of seats available. The subject is important for many Europeans, so our approach was to attract people’s attention and inspire them to take part in the discussion. We know that youth unemployment in Europe is a particularly crucial issue and decided to target young people by collaborating with a renown miniature installation artist, Slinkachu. A secondary target included art bloggers and communities (through the interest for Slinkachu’s work as an artist) and marketing media.

The objective was to inspire people to produce content and share it through social media (twitter, facebook, blogs) and to participate in the discussion before and during the conference, held on 15 October. We created a genuine community around the question "Why is it so hard to find a job" and miniature installations representing jobs that suffer skills shortage in France.

This simple idea: "create the smallest demonstration ever for a big issue" worked extremely well and took the European Parliament outside its usual circle of influence to gather a real community around the topic with a limited budget.

We started with a teasing through announcements on the European Parliament’s own channels and on the artist’s social networks, using pictures from his scouting trip to Paris.

A few days later, the installations were put up across the city by Slinkachu. Bloggers and media were invited to an exclusive preview of the installations, with the artist. Passers-by were invited to take pictures of the installations and to engage in the conversation through their own social media channels. Postcards and posters were distributed in Universities and around the locations of the installations.

Traditional and online media were informed about the guerilla and the ReACT conference to generate coverage ahead of the conference.

Slinkachu himself made pictures of all the installations that he then shared on his own channels.

We measured reach and sharing, quantity and quality of coverage in media and blogs, as well as live-streaming attendance.

2 million users on Twitter

20 million users on Facebook (9 million in France, 11 million worldwide)

More than 125 posts on social media and blogs

During the conference 1#ReACTParis became trending topic, TOP4 Paris and TOP7 France

More than 6000 hits on the ReACTParis website

Tweets provided real added value during the conference, connecting the audience outside the event with the people in the room

Very few negative comments

We took the European Parliament outside its usual circle of influence and gathered a real community around the event with a limited budget.

10% increase of the number of fans on the Paris EPIO Facebook page in 9 days.

28% increase of followers on the EPIO Twitter feed.