Silver - Education with an ‘H’
Issue 17 | December 2010
Agency
Shackleton, Madrid
Creative Team
General Creative Director: Juan Nonzioli; Executive Creative Director: Alfonso Marián ; Creative Director: Alvaro González; Digital Executive Creative Director: Enric Nel-lo; Copywriter: Jorge Martínez; Creative Supervisor: Oscar Moreno; Digital Art Director: Jordi Surribas; Digital Creative Supervisor: Oscar Pérez; PR Copywriter: Lara García; Art Director: Marta Pueyo
Production Team
Agency Producer: Cristina Cortizas; Digital Programming: Carlos Jimenez
Other Credits
General Manager: Javier Suso; Account Managers: Asún Sela, Javier Perales ; Account Executive: Ana Martínez; Digital Account Managers: Sascha Kraft, Ana Caballero; PR General Manager: Lucia Angulo; PR Account Manager: Elvis Santos
Date
September 2008
Background
After its success in France, Random House Mondadori wanted Daniel Pennac’s book “Mal de Escuela” (The sickness of school) to be a best seller in Spain.
Idea
Rather than sell the book itself, the agency opted to stir up a national debate about the quality of the educational system in Spain.
They took the video of a televised meeting between the new Minister of Education being handed her ministerial briefcase by the Vice-President and altered it in post-production.
In the video, the camera zooms in on the briefcase to reveal a spelling mistake. It is marked as belonging to the Ministry of Heducation. With an ‘H’.
This was uploaded onto the internet and comments invited.
At the same time, the agency created a website, www.heducation.com, where visitors could upload constructive criticism and suggestions with the promise these would be forwarded to the Minister herself.
There was intense speculation as to whether the video was or was not faked, which then widened out into a broader debate about education in general, with TV, radio and print media all picking up the theme.
Additional PR was generated by mailing key opinion formers copies of the famous briefcase and inviting them to air their views.
Results
The original objective was to sell 10,000 books but by the end of the first month of the campaign, 35,000 had been sold.
The website received 650,000 visits with over 1 million pages viewed. 60% of this came from links on other sites and 40% came by direct searches.
2,250 comments were uploaded to the site to be forwarded to the Ministry. Elsewhere, bloggers put up over 300 posts and there are already over 4,500 links from Google.