The Museum of the Great War is a relatively new museum. It opened in 2011 with a double aim:

- offer a new vision of World War 1, "on a human level"

- promote the memory of this war. That is why they wanted so much to connect with younger generation.

Now, it is a fact: in France as in many other parts of the world, young people spend more time on the social networks than in war museums. So, we had to find a new way to get them interested in WW1. Facebook seemed the perfect place to target them: this is where they tell nearly everything about their life. Their carefree, peaceful life. So, we thought: what if Facebook had existed in 1914? Imagine what people would have shared.

We did not create a usual brand page about history, but a page that looked like a personal profile: Leon Vivien’s one. An ordinary young guy torn away from his pregnant wife to be thrown into a slaughter. And everyday, Léon told his life through live posts illustrated by hundreds of documents selected from the museum's collection. On April 10th, 2013, we held a huge press conference. Journalists had been sent an invitation looking like the French draft notification of august 1914. Ten month of posts were already available on the profile and, from this day, we added some new ones everyday. We turned history into a human story that anyone could follow like serials with twists and turns. A story that subtly made the young Frenchies realize how lucky they were to live in a peaceful country.

The campaign was a huge success :

- more than 65,000 fans

- more than 5 million visitors

- nearly 3 million euros of earned media

- the number of fans of the official page of the Museum increased by 266%

- 96,000 visitors on location instead of the 2013 objective set to 80,000

(+45% from March to May, during the operation)

All for the cost of 400 invitations to the press conference: 250€