Funky Citizens - VoteNotTrade

AUDIENCE: We addressed the new type of “social activist”: active on social media, educated and informed about the main social and political topics, but less involved in tangible actions as volunteering or taking part in a protest (especially during cold weather season or weekends with their associated temptations). STARTING POINT: RE-ADDRESS THE TOPIC OF ELECTORAL EXCHANGE The pervert effect of knowledge is the fact that one tends to overlook the basic level of reality. The recent history showed us that Romanian elections are consistently influenced by the phenomenon of “electoral exchange” (troc electoral). Therefore, items as buckets, bottles of oil, packs of flour and so on tend to become a kind of currency for a specific vote. In other words, the electoral exchange became a tactic of political campaigns that addressed a segment of population affected by poverty. As this is a frequent phenomenon, our educated & high social status audience tends to mock it, but they overlook the profound consequences of the election exchange. We decided to leverage this topic in order to convince our audience to take action. STRATEGIC APPROACH: We opposed two types of social behaviors: The first one is about accepting the goods that are offered as electoral exchange. It’s a large-scale phenomenon and it’s difficult to stop its manifestations and consequences, as well. On the other hand, the second behavior, participating as an independent observer in the elections is a form of high civic involvement, a desirable behavior that helps our society become healthier and more self-conscious about its current status quo. CONCEPT: VOTNUTROC We decided to generate interest around our recruitment campaign based on this mindset: we cannot stop the electoral exchange phenomenon, but what we could do is to increase the civic participation in order to stop some negative implications as the illegalities from the voting day ( basically the job description of an observer) Our campaign was based on three pillars: an online recruitment platform with all necessary information about the role of an observer, a video-manifesto about the necessity of this campaign and an offline gallery that offered an artistic reinterpretation of objects and goods used throughout recent history as electoral exchange. This gallery had a two-layered role: one was related to a physical place in which people can enroll as observers, the second one helped us generate more awareness around our initiative. Execution: The entire campaign was developed and executed with a very limited media budget (500 eur), for Facebook ads. The core of our campaign was the online platform www.votnutroc.ro, where users could enroll as observes and find out more about the role of an observer in the electoral process through dedicated resources. Moreover, the platform hosted a video manifesto that explained the relationship and tension between the electoral exchange and the civic behavior of being an observer. In order to generate more relevance for our audience, we chose to narrate our story through relevant KOLs that were involved in the civic space, to build credibility and address different types of communities. For social activists, we used Carmen Uscatu (Daruieste Viata) and Elena Calistru (Funky Citizens). For the younger segment of our audience we involved Shurubel and Marciciu & Georgiana (his wife). Corina Bacanu and Omid Ghannadi are well known for their involvement in different types of community projects and helped us reach an audience that is interested in civic projects, but not quite activist. All of them shared the video manifesto in their communities (216K total followers) and actively invited people to enroll as observers. In order to generate more visibility & interest around the recruitment campaign, we created an offline spin-off of our initiative, for two weeks: Galeria Trocului Electoral ( The Gallery of the Electoral Exchange) in which we reinterpreted the most frequent objects used for electoral exchange: sugar, oil and flower, buckets and shovels and even a wheelbarrow. The gallery was promoted online through a Facebook event and dedicated posts and was hosted by Nod Makerspace – a hub for creative communities with a daily traffic of 300 people. During the opening evening of the exhibition hundreds of people (journalists, influencers, regular people and people that have their office in Nod Makerspace saw the exhibits, found more about the role of an observer and could enroll on the spot. We also had a gift ship inside of our gallery, where artists as Dan Perjosvschi, Diana Papuc, Cofetaria, Wanda Hutira, Dume de Mestecat and George Popa created small objects inspired from the election exchange that people could take home in exchange of a donation. The money resulted from their sales were donated to Funky Citizens in order to cover part of the observers’ expenses from the voting day (food & transportation), as being an independent observer is a completely unpaid, selfless gesture. Credits Client: Funky Citizens Brand: Funky Citizens Agency: Kubis Interactive Carina Toma - Copywriter & Group Creative Director Alin Marghidanu - Creative Director Victor Firan - Art Director Stefania Bercu - Strategy Stefan Chiritescu - Strategy Cosmin Pojoranu - Funky Citizens Elena Calistru - Funky Citizens