EXIT-Deutschland is a small initiative that helps Neo-Nazis, who want to drop out of the scene, by giving them new opportunities for an ‘afterlife’. The initiative relies on private donations and has to regularly prove its relevance.Challenge: Finding a new, target-oriented and impactful way to spread its name and engage in discourse with neo-Nazis and the public.To get the EXIT message across to the strongly segregated scene, we used an strategy that became a famous legend: the strategy of the Trojan horse. Therefore we developed a completely new medium that would work out as the right bait for the symbol- and uniform-minded Neo-Nazis. We produced 250 primed T-shirts with a typical rightist slogan that washed off. After the first wash, they said: ‘If your T-shirt can do it, so can you. We can help you to get free of right-wing extremism. EXIT-Deutschland.’

We invented the new technology of a t-shirt print that comes off in the laundry. With this brand-new product idea of a ‘Trojan shirt’, we were sure that we would catch the neo-Nazis’ attention and that the message would spread within and outside the scene.To ensure we got the public’s attention, we chose Europe’s biggest right-wing rock music festival as the place of action, being sure that the media would report on it. Moreover, a music festival would ensure we reached younger members of the scene, whose right-wing attitude may not yet be set in stone.To avoid any risk, we decided to leave the distribution to the organisers themselves. Therefore, we contacted the organises of the festival under the false identity of an unknown supporter and offered 250 of the ‘Trojan shirts’ as a donation.

Channel Two on Germany’s television claimed the ‘Trojan shirts’ to be the top social media hit in 2011.The media equivalence value of German TV, radio and print media was 50 times higher than the costs spent on the initiative.In the week of the initiative, there was an increase of 167,000% in single visitors on its home page.Compared to the same month one year before, EXIT-Deutschland received an increase of 434% donations in the month after the Trojan coup.But most importantly, with the Trojan coup we increased the EXIT consultancy rate among neo-Nazis 3-fold.