The #kuzniarsnout (original: #ryjkuzniara) campaign pays attention to instantly growing problem of Internet hate speech. Jarek Kuzniar, the face of the campaign, is a distinctive journalist and the most hated character in Poland. We presented Internet hate speech as a humiliating and destroying power that leaves visible and lasting marks in real life. Using PR tools we conducted the campaign mainly on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Twitter Periscope, Snapchat, Youtube), and also on radio, traditional and digital OOH.
Philosophy
Based on insight informed by psychological theory – words have power to change humans, we created our idea: Internet hate is a verbal violence. Marks stay forever. We chose Jarek Kuzniar, the most hated celebrity in Poland and collected more than 4,500 insulting comments about him. Then we created “character” formed by hate speech. We added pig snout, dog fangs, swastika scarf, Jewish side-locks etc. to the face of our ambassador. Photo teaser was aired first. Then we released video, presenting destroying power of hate.
Problem
Consciousness of hate speech problem is really low in Poland. People don’t realize that trolling is a kind of violence; it can influence on people in real life and make huge damages. We were asked to draw an attention of media and Polish people to hate speech problem, show how big the problem is, and present trolling as a violence that destroys humans.
Result
Our campaign was the hottest topic on Polish Internet on November 27th 2015. The video reached almost 1,100,000 views the first day of the campaign. On 1st day webpage visits increased 28 TIMES MORE than in a period before the campaign (during the first week people visited page 9.5 times more often). Our hashtag (#kuzniarsnout, original #ryjkuzniara) became No. 2 on Polish Twitter, just behind #blackfriday. All the biggest Polish Internet portals, radio stations, newspapers, and most of TV stations talked about “Kuzniar snout”. Both normal people and celebrities, who have also experienced trolling, made their own versions of our film. The campaign reached 13,400,427 people totally, and 7,203,524 people (more than half population of Poland using Internet) in social media. Social media impressions totaled 36,876,092. Our media budget was 3,842 Zlotys (around 1,000 Euros). One Zloty spent on media brought 794.63 Zlotys free media coverage. Earned free PR totaled 3,053,190 Zlotys (around 800,000 Euros).