The “Weltmaschine” campaign turned mankind’s biggest physics experiment into a public event in Germany. An orchestrated PR campaign was been developed for the launch of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It culminated in a spectacular exhibition in the Bundestag subway station in Berlin.The objective of the campaign was to generate curiosity and interest for basic research amongst the general public. Germany’s substantial funding for CERN was an additional focus for the communication campaign. The target groups are average citizens, scientists and opinion leaders in the fields of media and politics.The campaign succeeded because of its unusual PR formats, which mainly focussed on the direct dialogue between average citizens and scientists. In cooperation with experts from Deutsches Elektronen-Synchroton (DESY) and representatives of German nuclear and particle physics research, the complicated subject matter was presented to the public in an accessible manner. On several occasions, for example during the events in six planetariums, the LHC Express, the “Long Night of the Sciences” and the exhibition in the Bundestag subway station in Berlin, physicists explained the LHC while trying to convey the allure of science. These events were followed by intensive media relations work.

During the campaign kick-off, the LHC-Express provided more than 4,000 visitors with information about the LHC. At Berlin’s “Long Night of the Sciences”, scientists explained the LHC’s mission to interested citizens. The start of operations at CERN on 10 September was accompanied by a press conference organised by DESY and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. In order to show the link between the LHC and astrophysics, scientists discussed the LHC in animated lectures in six planetariums. The highlight of the campaign was the exhibition in Bundestag subway station starting on October 15th. Huge photographs and hands-on experiments depicted the incredible dimensions of the machine and its mission. A theme night, a lecture and a physics show also encouraged the exchange between citizens and scientists.City lights and billboards in Berlin, intense press and media relations work, a supplement in GEO magazine and a website accompanied the unusual PR formats.

The “Weltmaschine” campaign generated continuous media output from spring 2008 up to the highlight exhibition in October 2008. There was media coverage in almost all regional and national media formats. The supplement featuring the exhibition “Weltmaschine” in GEO magazine reached approximately 3.2 million readers. Regional radio stations such as RBB Radio Eins created extra programmes featuring the exhibition and physicists on site. Campaign events, such as the LHC-Express and the planetarium lectures, informed thousands of visitors about the LHC and its mission. More than 32,000 visitors saw the “Weltmaschine” exhibition in the Bundestag subway station, Berlin.The “Weltmaschine” campaign turned the LHC into a country-wide topic of conversation and media attention in Germany. For many citizens it enabled a new and intense access to the field of both particle and astro physics.