Ceres is quite a strong beer and In Italy it is a brand for a young target audience. Politicians also aim for a young audience, but Italian youth consider them the most aged, corrupted and incapable in Europe.

The challenge: Prove that the young Italians, even if they love a strong beer, are more responsible than those who represent them.

The opportunity: Elections are getting close and everybody feels that the tables are going to turn. But an absurd bureaucratic obstacle stops thousands of Italians studying abroad from voting.

The goal: Ceres Beer will bring the students’ problem to the attention of everyone.

The strategy: The young Italians abroad are the real heroes, and the will vote anyway.

Execution: We organize symbolic elections in major European cities.

Outcome: The cause of the students achieves unprecedented visibility across all media. Ceres gains invaluable awareness and becomes the most cited brand during the election weekend.

We organized symbolic elections in major European cities. We launched the hash tag “iovotolostesso” (#ivoteanyway), we sent students in each city a kit with everything they needed to run and publicize the elections: facsimile ballots, ballot boxes, flyers and posters. We also sent them a few packs of beer to celebrate at the end. We asked them to shoot video appeals with which we edited a video for the web. The idea became a movement and spontaneous groups were born all across Europe to support the operation.

Thousands of students from 26 European cities joined the initiative.

The protest achieved unprecedented visibility on all the national media: TV, newspapers magazines, radios, social media, news website and blogs.

The operation opened a debate all around the country.

#ivoteanyway became a tweet trend with more than 10.000 tweets in 10 days.

Brand search frequency on Google: +470% in 10 days.

Ceres was the most cited brand during the election week.

People reached: 20 millions, one third of the Italian population.

Investment: less than €5,000.