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Burn Racist Giga

Rolling Stone Magazine

Issue 52 | September 2019

Agency

Serviceplan Milan

Creative Team

Global Chief Creative Officer: Alexander Schill Executive Creative Director: Oliver Palmer Creative Directors: Pas Frezza, Luca Iannucci Copywriter: Vittorio Giannotti Art Director, PLAN.NET: Matteo Busti Art Director: Max Bratti

Production Team

Partner: Alessandro Pierobon Account Manager: Ginevra Galletti Head of Strategy: Luca Tapognani Partner Digital, PLAN.NET,: Michele Lorenzi Media Planning: MEDIAPLUS Social Media Specialist, PLAN.NET,: Camilla Malacarne Junior Social Media Manager, PLAN.NET: Marina De Lazzari Creative Innovation Directors: Lorenz Langgartner, Franz Ro¨ppischer

Other Credits

Production Company: OltreFargo

Date

March 2019

Background

Rolling Stone Italy had made its anti-racism stance clear with a cover declaring ‘We are not with Salvini’, a special issue challenging the racist views of the right-wing minister Matteo Salvini.

The magazine saw the internet as being its next focus of attention. This was the main channel for racists to spread hate, especially in Italy.

Idea

Racism in Italy spreads on the internet from post to post, from video to video, making it more violent and ugly day by day.

However, in Italy, 98% of people have a mobile plan with limited data, 6GB a month on average.

The idea was to set up a targeted Facebook campaign that lured racists to a fake microsite with racist videos. These videos were secretly increased in size from an average of 15MB up to 600MB. When racists watched a video, they burned up to 40 times more data, which meant they were driven offline in just a few minutes.

The custom video player combined different methods of increasing data usage dynamically, depending on the viewer.

The website was accessible only through mobile Facebook ads targeted at racists, to ensure only racists watched the videos and burned their data.

A video featuring musicians and celebrities who supported the initiative was made and published.

Results

Over 28 million media impressions led to a 1,500% increase in traffic to rollingstone.it Over 5,000GB of data was burned in 10 days. Over 800 racists have been taken offline.

Our Thoughts

In this issue we have showcased a couple of campaigns that tackle fake news (E-Farsas on pages 82-83, Metro Brasil on pages 30- 31). To blur still more the moral distinction between what is fake and what is truthful, here are fake ads leading to a fake site.

Of course, the cause justifies the means though this sort of ‘hacktivism’ is actually illegal, not that Rolling Stone is likely to be prosecuted.

With its legacy of left-leaning liberal views, tackling right-wing extremism is a natural brand purpose for Rolling Stone. Since it has been around for over fifty years, it probably needs a bit of refreshing so, while this may look like a public service, it is a reaffirmation of everything provocative that the publication used to stand for.