Many blame social media for the Spanish language's impoverishment. People have gradually lost their command of grammar and sophisticated language to a worrying extent. But what if social media could be used to change this?

Proximity Spain set out to save forgotten words by giving people a familiar tool: an e-commerce platform, "The Shop of #ForgottenWords," where people could "purchase" a word, paying with a tweet, a Facebook or a Pinterest share. That way, every purchase would contribute to putting forgotten words into conversations that were taking place on social media.

The key to ensuring sales through the e-commerce platform was to make the featured products - words - attractive to today's consumers, by marketing them in an easy-to-understand and appealing way: through great visual design that people would love to share.

The e-commerce platform allowed Proximity to bring the initiative to life in a way that would rapidly engage people.

Each one of the words in the catalogue was captured in an illustration created by a different Proximity art director. Lettering techniques were used, so that each word's design would help explain its definition, and also make it more saleable. All together, more than 50 Proximity art directors in Barcelona and Madrid participated, resulting in a very diverse collection.

Via email, the media and the public could nominate forgotten words they wanted to save from oblivion. These words were also illustrated, added to the catalogue, and sent to those who had suggested them in a personalized email.

In addition, a booklet containing the best designs was created and sent to potential clients.

"The Shop of #ForgottenWords " has been the most successful Corporate Social Responsibility project in the advertising industry in Spain, according to the following data:

More than 168,000 words were purchased through " The Shop of #ForgottenWords."

On average, a 44% increase in the use of forgotten words was registered on social media, helping them regain their lost relevance.

Thanks to the tweets written using forgotten words, the initiative reached 20% of hispanic population worldwide.

More than 250 media outlets covered the story.

An estimated €2.15M was generated in earned media as a result of media coverage, with zero PR budget.

A total of 23 shows were created specifically to talk about the initiative.

As a result of the CSR project, Teide, an educational publisher, chose Proximity Spain to develop its new campaign.