Znak.com is a new independent mass media that appeared after the forced selling of famous URA.RU portal. Experienced team of journalists and reporters open an independent portal intending to have open confrontation with local government and police structures. To have the desired level of influence, the portal should have site traffic more than 20,000 unique users per day. For reaching this objective, they should launch a massive outdoor campaign, but local outdoor operators, pressed and scared by regional government, refuse to place ZNAK.COM layouts.

The objective was to find a bright and unusual escape from situation, which will help ZNAK.COM solve the task of increasing traffic and readers loyalty.

Target audience: readers and potential users of the portal, news mass media and social political bloggers.

The refusal to place outdoor campaign under the color of extremism itself is a PR- and newsbreak, because it violates the rights, which are declared in the Constitution and makes Russian Federation the country of dual standards. To strengthen the effect of this news, we decided to force the operators place the layouts eventually.

So we decided to use quotes from Constitution of Russian Federation in advertising campaign and posted layouts on the website.

Objective: to attract attention to advertising campaign of the independent information portal ZNAK.COM

Problem: ZNAK.COM portal, which is known for their confrontations with government, had faced a problem of advertising campaign realization. All main owners of outdoor resources in the city refuse to place znak.com lay outs, pressed by regional government. The official reason was that any ads of this web portal were perceived as containing incitement to extremism. So, znak.com was refused a possibility to place outdoor campaign that is illegal according to Russian laws.

The situation looked absolutely absurd and to highlight it in public, we decided to integrate quotes from Constitution of Russian Federation to advertising campaign.

"No one can usurp power in the Russian Federation".

"Everyone shall be guaranteed the freedom of ideas and speech".

"All people shall be equal before the law and courts".

We posted future lay-outs to the website, and they started being discussed by mass-media. So now the outdoor operators obviously could not refuse ZNAK.COM to place their campaign under color of “content with incitement to extremism”.

Thereby, the fact of placing outdoor advertising became one of the instruments of the global campaign of ZNAK.com portal, incriminating state in using dual standards.

Constitution campaign caused enormous resonance in public, political and social life of the country and made a great positive feedback in social media. The news about campaign rapidly shattered all over the world and was quoted by more than 150 mass media. Site traffic doubled.

We reminded the citizen of Russian Federation that we do live in democratic country, and rights and freedoms, which are declared in Constitution, should also be respected in real life.

In the advertising campaign we quoted the most actual and 'painful' articles of Russian Constitution.

-No one can usurp power in the Russian Federation.

-Everyone shall be guaranteed the freedom of ideas and speech.

-All people shall be equal before the law and courts.

As it was expected, the news was promptly picked up by Russian independent mass media and the outdoor operators were put into very awkward position. They could refuse to place campaign with Constitution and violate Russian law by that. Or they could place the layouts and admit our rightness. ZNAK.COM would benefit from both options.

Eventually, the layouts were placed in the streets of Ekaterinburg, that made one more newsbreak and a lot of discussions in federal and world media.

Business Goals were reached. We increased site hits in 6 times per day: from 10,000 to 61,000. From that period site traffic was only growing. The number of unique users doubled from 10,000 to 20,000.

Because of this campaign, ZNAK.COM entered the rating of TOP 20 the most quoted mass media in Russia and took the 12th place in it.

The news about campaign rapidly shattered all over the world and was quoted by more than 150 mass media. The total cost of free media about campaign with brand name mentioning is more than $200,000.

Due to original idea of appealing to Constitution we increased the loyalty to the portal through the target audience and reminded them that we do live in democratic country, and rights and freedoms, which are declared in Constitution, should also be respected in real life.