Our work shows that – now more than ever – we need to ensure that communication is not simply one-sided, but involves people emotionally in a topic or brand. This is the only way to penetrate the hearts and minds of consumers and bring about a real change in behaviour.

The world is in crisis – and people have become numb to constant images of suffering. They no longer respond to communications that promote charitable causes by depicting misery. This particularly applies to awareness of refugee deaths in the Mediterranean, which is steadily falling. This is something civilian maritime rescue organisation Sea-Watch knows all too well. And for an NGO with no state-run alternative, which is totally reliant upon donations, it’s a catastrophe. These vital donations, which are required to maintain their rescue vessels, can only be generated by raising awareness. But how to reawaken people’s interest in this topic and penetrate the predominant influencer lifestyle themes?

To rouse people from their crisis fatigue and indifference, we had to deliver a real shock. And then generate donations.

So we created a Trojan horse: a fictitious ‘lifestyle drink’, erTrinkwasser, that was intended to infiltrate the lives of the target audience. Because erTrinkwasser, which plays on the German words for ‘drink’ and ‘drown’, was not, in fact, a trendy drink, but rather a means of highlighting the tragic drownings using influencer marketing.

The aim was to deliver the message like a punch to the gut at the end of the customer journey, which would inevitably increase people’s willingness to donate. Because if simply portraying suffering no longer has the desired effect, then you have to confront people with their own behaviour. The aim was that anyone who followed the ‘lifestyle’ advert for the fictitious drink would be all the more shocked by their own behaviour: following the cool ad, while often ignoring other appeals.

Every asset – OOH, film or post – initially appeared to be conveying a positive lifestyle message. For example, the headlines of the key visuals contained a double meaning that caused confusion at first, and then became unbearable. The growing sense that something was wrong with the motifs was confirmed by QR codes on the OOH motifs and social media links to the landing page, where users were confronted with the shocking revelation, along with the background to the campaign and an appeal for donations.

​​The campaign not only achieved 18 million views during the implementation period, but also gained a great many supporters for the message, helping us to generate further coverage by means of pro bono placements. TV reports provided additional national reach – all of which ensured that donations tripled within days. This money was urgently needed to purchase a new rescue vessel, Sea-Watch 5, and save lives.

In the motifs, we pushed the ambiguity of the headlines to the limit. Every line of the campaign had a double meaning: a lifestyle meaning and a more sombre meaning that referred to drowning in the Mediterranean. With puns generally only used in Germany in a humorous context, the shocking moment when the truth was revealed to the viewer was even more intense.