Too much awesomeness on social media can make us sick.

To create awareness for this problem, we looked beyond all the staged awesomeness: With a social media campaign that makes use of 360° posts on Facebook to show not only the online awesomeness, but also the reality around it. 360° headlines played with social media clichés and made people share and comment. For example, an awesome selfie became a strong statement and an awesome burger turned into an honest meal.

To ensure that we really address potentially depressed people on Facebook, we used a special clustering algorithm that was based on psychological analyses.

Marked with the hashtag #awesomemakesmesick, more and more honest posts have appeared, making clear no life is 360° awesome, but each one is important.

For "Freunde fürs Leben e.V.", a German depression aid, we published special 360° posts on Facebook between 25/11/2016 and 13/01/2017. On first sight, they displayed typical social media clichés, but when scrolled horizontally, they revealed the true story behind the staged online awesomeness. Every post made use of 360° headlines to draw the users into its story.

Not only did we achieve 1.2 million media impressions – we reached actually depressive people and a Facebook Relevance Score of 10 out of 10. The interaction rate was 3 times higher than average and with every post, engagement with depression aid organization increased by 14%.