Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum: Remember. Correcting Memory Errors

Credits & Description:

Agency: Fcb Warsaw Warsaw, Poland
Client: Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial And Museum
Product: Remember App
Entrant: Fcb Warsaw Warsaw, Poland
Title: Remember. Correcting Memory Errors.
Product/Service: Remember App
Idea Creation: Fcb Warsaw Warsaw, Poland
Additional Company: Mintmedia Warsaw, Poland
Additional Company 2: Macoscope Warsaw, Poland
Creative Director: Malgorzata Drozdowska (FCB Warsaw)
Creative Director: Agnieszka Klimczak (FCB Warsaw)
senior copywriter: Czeslaw Plawgo (FCB Warsaw)
senior art director: Wojtek Szpor (FCB Warsaw)
New Business Director: Agnieszka Heidrich (FCB Warsaw)
The Campaign
After analysing the history of the recurrence of the expression “polish death camps”, we realized that, what is often seen as a diplomatic scandal, most of the times is just a simple mistake, made out of haste or lack of knowledge, a mistake that later on echoes to the wider public and is repeated as a fact, falsifying the collective memory. That’s why we decided to address those, whose word choice has the biggest impact on broad audiences – the journalists. We created a special plug-in application for the most popular text editors used by journalists - “Remember”. The app works as a spellchecker, highlighting just one mistake – the phrase “polish death camp” or “polish extermination camp” and suggesting the historically correct expression.
Execution
We developed the plug-in application for both Mac and PC’s text editors commonly used by the journalists, in 16 languages – all the languages of Auschwitz Museum guides. We also set up a webpage correctmistakes.auschwitz.org, where the application was available for the free download, allowing the public for the direct intervention, whenever the mistake was spotted.
Tuesday the 16th, Auschwitz Museum sent to journalists of 300 different media outlets around the world the “Remember” application, together with the letter from the director of the Auschwitz Museum, a link to the webpage and the short movie introducing the application. The reaction was immediate and overwhelming.
The app provoked a true global reaction: supporting and encouraging media coverage from all corners of the globe – 220 different media outlets from BBC news and The Independent, to The Heertz and The Hindu, generated 67.000.000 media impressions globally and started unprecedented conversation about this erroneous expression with 35.000.000 social media impressions and 19.600.000 Twitter accounts reached. All organic.
The response was so overwhelming, that the Polish government decided to make the application a new diplomatic tool to be used for interventions made by Polish Embassies around the world, commissioning the development of the application in additional 10 languages. The first successful interventions of Polish Embassies, supported by individual readers prompting the use of the application (CBC Vancouver, De Standaard, The Independent, Bergamo Post), let us believe that this tool will eventually prevent this mistake from recurring.
The Situation
“Remember” campaign addresses one of the biggest PR problems regarding Polish history: „the Polish death camps” controversy – a misleading and erroneous phrase for years repeated by the media all over the world, which led to numerous false accusations of Poland being responsible for Nazi atrocities committed on Polish soil during WWII. While on average every 3 days international media use the expression „polish death camps”, last year the problem itself was mentioned only in 10 foreign articles. We needed to find a way to talk to those who spread this offensive mistake and win them to our case.
The Strategy
The Auschwitz Museum, the entity that for years was advocating the cause, even persuading UNESCO to officially change the name of the Memorial to “German Nazi Extermination Camp“, instead of sending "press release" following 71th Anniversary of Camp Liberation, selected the media outlets from all over the world, which in the past had been using the erroneous expression, and sent the “Remember” application directly to their journalists.