EU Elections Campaign 2019

With Brexit, the rise of fake news, populism, and nationalism the European project felt fragile in the time leading up to the 2019 EU elections. In 2014, only 43% showed up to vote, an all-time low. So, this time the Parliament commissioned a democratic campaign about why we should vote.

Insight: Together we can shape hope.

A survey revealed that 80% of Europeans believe that what unites Europe is more important than what separates us. But it also showed that many have worries or doubts regarding the future of Europe. Climate change, migration, terrorism, and many more global issues make the future feel uncertain. The European Union is our hope for tackling these problems together.

In a threatening world, we wanted a message of hope for the future. And the biggest act of hope is putting a child into this world. Our idea was to make a documentary film about the coming generations of Europe. Literally speaking, we filmed the intense and raw beauty of new Europeans being born all across Europe, right before the elections.

Rollout

The ambition was a 360º campaign with TV, social media, and press, but taking the huge and diverse target group of 400 million eligible European voters into consideration, the means were limited. Most of the exposure had to be earned. The narrative for the social film was designed to carry a big press push in all 27 EU countries and was again supported by shorter films for TV and cinema, radio, print, online, and an ambitious ground game with hundreds of thousands of volunteers.

• An unbelievable 18.6% rise in voters from 43 to 51%
• The hero video received +135 million views on social media alone
• It was liked, shared, and commented on more than 600,000 times
• 84 national tv-channels aired a short version almost 2500 times
• Extensive coverage by all the biggest media in Europe