The Hidden Drug is the perfect example of how to detonate a social and media conversation through a creative approach about a problem that increasingly worries society: polarization and the distrust it generates among people, institutions, companies and brands.

Through this campaign we aimed to demonstrate that consuming polarizing content on a daily basis and making decisions under this prism is as negative, harmful and damaging as making decisions under the effects of any drug.

Más Democracia is a citizen political organization that wants to influence institutions, parties, media and public opinion by networking with other national and international organizations from ideological plurality and intergenerational diversity, mobilizing citizens, and proposing changes in our rules and our behaviors and our culture, to improve the quality of democracy and increase citizen political participation.

In this context, the main objective of the THD (The Hidden Drug) project was to make tangible something that we have increasingly internalized as a society, a problem that we do not pay attention to today: polarization and its consequences.

After analyzing more than 600 million messages on social media, we discovered that the level of polarization in Spain has grown by 35% in the last five years (40% in Latin America) and more and more people are exposed to this global phenomenon, one of the great threats of this century. Since the arrival of the pandemic, the level of involvement or engagement in conversations that generate division is growing at levels of 19% per year in our country. Moreover, polarization already affects 1 in 4 people in the world.

This study revealed some areas that are particularly polarized in society. Immigration stood out as the area that generated the most controversy in Spain. Followed by feminism, the leader in terms of volume of conversation (accounting for 22% of the conversation analyzed) but with a lower level of polarization, trade unions were third in the ranking, in addition to climate change and abortion, generating a high degree of polarization.

Faced with this problem, we developed a campaign in collaboration with neuroscientists, sociologists, psychologists and data experts. The initiative posed an uncomfortable reflection: it compared polarization to a common drug. The study and the campaign warned that this phenomenon can be addictive and cause the body, like some drugs, to activate substances such as dopamine or endorphins, which in turn activate opioid receptors.

The main challenge of the brand with this project was to launch an exercise of reflection in terms of polarization, generating at the same time a conversation, which can be somewhat uncomfortable, among all the agents of our society, the target market we needed to reach.

The Hidden Drug is a campaign that aimed to demonstrate that consuming polarizing content on a daily basis and making decisions under this prism is as negative, harmful and damaging as making decisions under the effects of any drug.

The main objective of the project was to raise awareness about an issue that is becoming normalized in our society, through a communication strategy based on an exhaustive study: polarization and its consequences. This project was designed to have an impact on all groups of society, demonstrating that polarization is present in many areas of our lives.

To do so, we approached our campaign from a hypothesis that we were able to contrast thanks to Big Data and Artificial Intelligence techniques. We analyzed more than 600 million messages on social media collected in Spain and in Latin American countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, United States, Spain and Mexico, among others.

We launched this global campaign as a wake-up call and a reflection exercise about the normalization of this phenomenon. The main purpose was to demonstrate that polarization drives people, institutions, companies and brands away from each other.

We conducted a campaign, together with neuroscientists, sociologists and experts, which raises an uncomfortable reflection: comparing polarization with a common drug. We demonstrated that this phenomenon has become addictive and provokes in the organism the same effect as a common drug: the activation receptors of our brain that provoke serotonin. We decided to make the huge problem of polarization visible and we created THD, the first drug that you don't need to physically consume to perceive its effects.

To do so, we set the goal of generating a poetic and careful visual language in a raw and difficult context such as opiates. Creating a piece shot narratively in reverse, where we wanted to make the viewer see the origin of the drug from consumption to the content that causes it, through the synthesis in the real powder. Images that combined with the sound design, caused discomfort to the viewer.

THD was very well received in the media, generating a social debate in various types of digital, television and print media. More than 1.8 billion impressions and 530 impacts were achieved in national and international media.In addition, the video piece has achieved more than 6.3 million views and there has been a 240% growth in searches for the term "polarization" during the campaign. Finally, the success of the project has been such that it has exceeded 2 million euros in earned media.