Helping the European Commission promote the rule of law in the EU
ICF Next created a social media campaign to help the Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers (DG JUST) explain the complex topic of rule of law to Europeans.
The rule of law is one of the main EU values, protecting democracy by guaranteeing citizen’s rights and freedoms. Yet its impact on people’s everyday lives is not always familiar to Europeans.
Challenge
Results of a Eurobarometer survey show that only 53% of EU citizens feel well-informed about the rule of law. The European Commission wanted to promote the rule of law and its importance, tasking ICF Next to reach citizens on social media in all 27 Member States. Target audiences were based on relevant demographic groups correlating with previous Eurobarometer survey results on citizen’s expressed interest in rule of law, which differed in each country.
The campaign’s objective was to raise awareness and educate people about the six key principles that define the rule of law:
- Equality before the law
- Legal certainty
- Legality
- Separation of powers
- No abuse of power
- Independent and impartial courts
Solution
Together with DG JUST, we decided an out-of-the-box approach was the best solution to effectively communicate about an abstract and political topic. The approach we took was to use art and storytelling to explain in a simple yet creative way a topic that is not easy to comprehend. For the “Rule of Law” campaign, the European Commission asked renowned artist Christoph Niemann to create a short animation for each principle.
Recognising that the animations needed to be relatable, the campaign used sport as a metaphor to convey the message. Each animation showed different sports’ situations and what happens when rules are taken away, showcasing examples of what would happen if there were no boundaries (laws). All animations were accompanied with concise captions explaining the principles and inviting people to engage with the content. The ads ran on Facebook and Instagram in two waves, for a total duration of four weeks per country.
Results
The results show that the social media campaign on Facebook and Instagram managed to successfully pass its message to millions of EU citizens; reaching over 88 million people. Ads were shown more than 577 million times and with a CPM (cost per mille) of 1.61 EUR, lower than initial estimation. Therefore, we achieved more impressions for less budget, maximising the campaign efforts.
The campaign also achieved high engagement with users, generating 879,666 link clicks and over 100,000 post reactions. Animations had more than 4M complete video plays.