Since 2020, Russia has had a law criminalising the dissemination of “fake” news about COVID-19. In practice, this means that the authorities do not recognise the majority of doctors who died from COVID, in order to downplay the impact of the pandemic to the public and world. Their families are left without money and often without a breadwinner.

Together with the «Vblagodarnost» foundation, we decided to address this injustice and solve 2 tasks - to keep alive the memory of the doctors as heroes ignored by the state (by telling their names) and to raise funds to financially assist their families.

• Budget - 0.1 million rubles - production and delivery for media/journalists

The popular singer Dolphin wrote a song for us around which we built the entire project. As the symbol of a forbidden truth which cannot be suppressed, we recorded Dolphin's single on records created using a unique technology which was utilised in the Soviet Union. We used vinyls in 3 channels - we sold them at charity auction, we send them as a press-release to media and give them away to opinion leaders

Using a recording technique called “on the bones” which often featured X-rays, dissidents passed forbidden Western hits to each other. We restored this scheme according to the drawings and diagrams, since the original equipment was too old. We printed the vinyl “on the lungs”, symbolizing the forbidden truth bursting out and sent it in a limited edition to the media and to an auction, the proceeds from which went to a fund to assist the families of the doctors. The single itself also became a fundraiser - all the money from streaming went to the fund.

Our project was picked up by the media - 65 publications from Forbes to Vogue! Everywhere, except for state publications and channels. Our song topped the charts on all streaming platforms and people began to create art in social networks in memory of doctors, attaching our track. Every 15 minutes a similar, new post appears in Russia.

No one can hide the truth, especially regarding our heroes in uniform.

Results:

Funds raised - more than 1.5 million rubles

Media outlets - 70

OTS 230,000,000

PR value 235,000 USD