Reborn - the story behind the PR campaign of the decade!

Just before Christmas, the Holmes Report voted Gjenfodt.no and its "Be born again" campaign from 2012 as the best PR campaign of the decade. Out of a total of 40,000 international entries, it was the idea, which was once hatched by a team of designers, consultants and developers at Dekode in collaboration with PR consultants from Gambit H+K, that won the award. Here's the story behind the campaign.

Two-part campaign

In 2012, Norad wanted to create a campaign to inform the Norwegian people about its aid work. An important target group was schoolchildren, in addition to the general population. Dekode submitted a tender in collaboration with Gambit Hill +Knowlton Strategies and won the competition. 

- "We quickly started coming up with ideas," says Øystein Kristoffer Paulsen, developer at Dekode. "At first we talked about creating a quiz or a game to reach school classes. We realized that we could split the campaign in two, reaching out to the students, but also to the general population. 

One part became the National Championship in Aid - a quiz where both school classes and individuals competed against each other. Individuals were able to donate their points to school classes, thus engaging entire communities in the competition. Dekode created the website where 14,500 participants registered for the competition in 2013. In addition, 5,700 people tested out the first three questions in the competition that were available outside of registration. The finalists in the single final were those who, after seven weeks, 70 questions and some bonus tasks, had the highest total score. The winning school class received a trip to Tanzania. 

A different life

The second part of the campaign was the website Gjenfodt.no, which was aimed at a general audience. 

- The goal was to somehow show people in Norway what it was like to grow up in the various countries where Norad contributes through aid organizations. "We had a lot of different ideas," says Øystein of Dekode about the process. The team of developers, designers and advisors from Dekode held a workshop to brainstorm ideas where everyone participated with their input. This was for both the NM i Bistand and for the website, which was aimed at the general public. 

- Facebook had just released its timeline layout, with points for each event. That's when I came up with the idea of copying this and creating a fictional timeline. People who logged in would see their Facebook profile and timeline as if they had been born somewhere else. Places where completely different things were important. That way, they could easily relate to a life and upbringing that was different from what we experience here in Norway," says Øystein. The idea was further developed by Dekode, Norad and Gambit H+K together. 

Detailed work

- We prepared a large Excel spreadsheet that Gambit H+K used to collect all the data we needed. There was an incredible amount of detail, such as information about the countries, map coordinates, photos, music videos and facts based on the results of Norwegian aid. Everything had to be approved by Norad. Once everything was gathered, we created the code for the simulator in Dekode and fed it with data from the Excel sheet," says Øystein.

The Gjenfodt.no website itself was also given a beautiful, vibrant and dynamic design with a parallax effect. It was illustrated, animated and designed by Carl Rustung, former employee of Dekode. Morten Vernegg and Ole-Sigurd Walla from Dekode designed the timeline itself. During the campaign period, more than 200,000 users logged in and created new timelines. 

Honor and glory

What started as a loose idea from a developer in Dekode's old premises quickly became a popular website that, thanks to the collaboration with Gambit H+K, quickly gained a lot of attention. The campaign won Campaign of the Year in the Social Media Awards 2013. The solution also came out on top in competition with the 50 best communication campaigns in the world at the Global SABRE Awards in Miami on October 29, 2014. This is considered the PR industry's most prestigious award. 

And now, in December 2019, it was voted as the campaign of the decade. 

- "This type of award is probably more important for those who work in the PR industry," says Øystein, who thinks what they created at the time was a fun idea that developed into some really great websites. "For us as a WordPress agency, it's both great, and almost a little absurd, to have been so involved in the campaign that was named the best of the decade. 

Focus on societal benefit

The work for Norad with NM i bistand and Gjenfødt was one of the first projects Dekode had with a focus on social benefit. It helped pave the way for a new way of seeing which projects we at Dekode want to work on. Now we're taking the plunge and want to focus on the segment for socially beneficial organizations in the time to come. The fact that we have a lot to contribute in this field is well demonstrated by Gjenfødt.

It's still possible to visit gjenfødt.no and be born again, but since Facebook has changed a lot since 2012, some of the content will be gone. Instead, we recommend that you take a look at the case here on our pages, where you will find both photos and video.