Joseph of Nazareth on a journey
Issue 22 | March 2012
Agency
Jung von Matt/Neckar GmbH Stuttgart
Creative Team
Managing Directors: Peter Waibel, Daniel Adolph; Creative Direction: Philipp Barth, Holger Oehrlich ; Project Management: Vanessa Frenkler; Idea and Copywriting: Holger Diesinger ; Copywriter: Gert Schilling
Date
December 2011
Background
The Evangelical Youth Council in Württemberg asked Jung von Matt/Neckar to design them an Advent calendar. What they got was the Advent calendar modernised.
Idea
For a period of 24 days, Joseph of Nazareth tweeted the Christmas story on Twitter from his own personal perspective, along with all his thoughts and doubts. He described the journey to Bethlehem with his pregnant wife Mary, and told of his encounters and experiences. Along the way he also plugged his carpentry business.
The intention was to bring people closer to a story they have all heard countless times before and get them to pause a moment and think about it. Of course, Joseph had a particulary human perspective on the events that unfolded around him, a perspective many young Germans could share.
Results
There were thousands of response tweets from around the entire world, people offering advice, asking questions and giving Joseph encouragement. The tweets were even translated into Korean.
There was a wave of media coverage with The Times and The Independent in the UK reporting on the story plus articles on heute.de, Focus online, Spiegel online, Sky News, ABC News not to mention an article on the cover of DIE WELT and a double-page spread in WELT KOMPAKT. Not bad for a story more than 2,000 years old.
Our Thoughts
One marketer who subscribes to Directory will be exasperated when he sees this campaign. A bit of not-for-profit work just done for the creatives to show off, that’s what he will say. Won’t you, Andy?! The reason we have included it is because marketing has made a big thing about story-telling in the last couple of years and several people have made lots of money running story-telling workshops. None of them me, alas. Now here’s an idea that shows how to use Twitter to tell a story. There must be countless ways this approach could be made to work for commercial brands. As it is, an obscure little organisation in Württemberg has managed to reach a few million and revitalise what is one of the oldest stories in the world.