“EVA STORIES”
K’s Galleries
Issue 52 | September 2019
Agency
Leo Burnett Israel
Creative Team
VP Creative: Ami Alush Creative Team: Oren Ben Naim, Meital Miller
Production Team
Studio Manager: Sagi Valenstain Screenplay: Maya Kochavi, Mati Kochavi Direction: Mati Kochavi, Maya Kochavi Executive producers: Mati Kochavi, Yona Wiesental Production company: Pov Productions
Other Credits
CEO: Adam Polachek Chief Client Director: Idit Zukerman Account Supervisor: Orian Liber Account Manager: Reut Frid Media: Publicis Media PR: Debby Group Communications Influencer outreach: C, branded content agency
Date
May 2019
Background
It has been 80 years since the Holocaust. So how do you pique the interest of 13-30 year-olds who feel it has nothing to do with them? To reconnect them with its memories, K's Galleries chose the medium closest to them, Instagram STORIES, and set out to retell the story in a dynamic, relevant and innovative way.
Idea
Based on the life of Eva Heyman, @eva. stories was the recreation of a real 13-year- old Jewish Hungarian girl’s wartime diary. The entries she made in 1944 were turned into a first-ever “Instagram stories film”.
Filming herself selfie-style, Eva tells the story of the German invasion of Hungary, the confiscation of her family’s business, being made to wear a yellow star, being forced into a ghetto and eventually deported to Auschwitz.
It was what life under Nazi occupation would have been like to a teenager equipped with a mobile phone and social media.
The revolutionary and innovative documentary style was intended to make the Holocaust relevant to a younger generation for whom memories of genocide had almost completely faded.
To get the campaign rolling, the public was teased with billboards while social media was flooded with calls from opinion leaders, celebrities and influencers to follow @ eva.stories. A video trailer was posted on Eva's page two days before Holocaust Remembrance Day.
On May 1st, Holocaust Remembrance Day, the films went live at exactly 4pm. Over 24 hours, 220 videos were uploaded to Eva’s Instagram page depicting the invasion of her hometown to her deportation three months later. The last story aired on May 2nd, just as Holocaust Day ended.
Results
A Holocaust memorial for the smartphone generation was successfully created. 1.7M followers & 10 million visits @eva. stories.
Over 330 million views on IG Stories across 89 countries.
On average, each video was viewed by a million people.
1.4 million people watched the closing scene live. 230,000 messages were posted by viewers.
40% of the followers were aged of 13-24. Over 1,000 news items were generated. Biggest influencers’ activity in Israel’s history. Massive public support, including from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, The White House, State of Israel, IDF, Gal Gadot, Bar Refaeli.
Our Thoughts
This is a completely new entertainment format, a 70-minute film released in segments lasting between three seconds and three minutes each. It was bank-rolled by an Israeli billionaire and produced by his daughter. They now have four other projects in pre-production, using Instagram stories to involve the audience in ways that conventional film simply cannot.
Mati Kochavi put all the money into the project because his own family had been caught up in The Holocaust. Make no mistake, this is big budget stuff - tanks, large numbers of extras in uniforms, and muchofitshotonacameraasifitwas Eva’s smartphone.
The launch was brilliantly orchestrated with posters and a trailer whipping up a frenzy of indignation in Israel before anyone had seen any of the films. Anything that annoys their elders is guaranteed to interest the young, who found the intimacy of Eva’s story captivating. To thousands of them around the world, Eva was real and her death was disturbing and shocking. A generation born 50 years after The Holocaust is now discussing what it means to them.