In 1959 Flemish-Italo artist Rocco Granata scored a monster hit with ‘Marina’. The song was so popular that many parents called their baby daughter Marina.

However, in the nineties, the name Marina was used to define a trashy bimbo. The name was even included in the dictionary, described as ‘vulgar girl’. 50 years later, a movie was created based on Rocco's life. Because the song was so crucial for Rocco’s career, the movie had to be named Marina.

But there were some doubts whether the name would still have that negative connotation. So how do you promote a movie with a name of shame?

By clearing that name. For the movie, but also for 6.000 Marina’s in Flanders.

To do so we composed a team of Marina’s as the spokeswomen of our campaign who would help us by demonstrating that the prejudice against Marina is completely wrong.

To reach out to the greater public, Marina Dingemans raised an appeal on Facebook to remove Marina from the dictionary. Together with movie director Stijn Conincx and Rocco, she also sent a personal letter to all Flemish Marina’s to ask for their support. 30% of all Marina’s responded, supported by friends and family.

In the meantime we organized interviews and press opportunities with our Marina’s to maximize visibility. We even filled a cinema theatre only with Marina’s to enjoy the movie and a private concert with Rocco, which resulted in great press coverage across all media and over half a million people saw the movie.

We composed a team of Marina’s as spokeswomen for our campaign who would help us by demonstrating that the prejudice against Marina is completely wrong.

One of them, Marina Dingemans raised an appeal on Facebook to remove the name from the dictionary.

We developed an application that enabled the user to erase the name Marina from the dictionary.

Together with movie director Stijn Conincx and Rocco, Marina Dingemans also sent a personal letter to all Flemish Marina’s to ask for their support. 30% of all Marina’s responded, supported by friends and family.

In the meantime we organized interviews and press opportunities with our Marina’s to maximize visibility. We even filled a cinema theatre only with Marina’s to enjoy the movie and a private concert with Rocco, which resulted in great press coverage.

All national newspapers (both print and online) gave our Marina’s a chance to speak, often on full pages which enabled us to reach out to 627.053 readers.

Our Marina’s could also share their story on radio during a full 8 minutes prime time, where we reached 1.100.000 listeners.

The Marina website hit 50.000 unique visitors.

We organized a 15 minute debate on prime time television about the name Marina. One out of three Flemish households (790.641 viewers) saw Marina’s debating in a confident and intelligent way.

In the end, the movie was more popular than its blockbuster competitors with over 500.000 visitors which more than doubled the expected 200.000 visitors.