In Sweden, most people know and sympathise with The Non-Violence Project’s cause, but the absence from media and a lack of communication was interpreted as a diminishing need for their work. To convince millennial Swedes to support and engage with our cause—ultimately revitalising the brand—we needed them to realise that deadly violence was still an issue, and one that could have devastating effects anywhere, any time.

The idea and beauty of the Internet is that everyone can access and create anything. That’s also the most dangerous aspect of it. Lately, a new threat has surfaced – torrents with 3d-printable guns that are just as deadly as real ones, but with three major differences: they are untraceable, unregulated and easy to access.

To leverage the urgency of this rising threat, we flooded file sharing sites with fake torrents, identical with the real gun torrents, containing a 3D render of Non-Violence's symbol “the knotted gun”, originally created as a memorial tribute to John Lennon, after he was shot and killed outside his home in 1980.

In Sweden, deadly violence has in general been on the decline since the 1990s. However, deadly violence with firearms has not declined. Instead, it has structurally changed with more criminal conflict using easy obtained, one-handed firearms.

Given the easy access, 3D-printed guns is an emerging issue and the Swedish police have already seized a number of them from gang related conflicts in the city of Malmö (which holds Sweden’s most fatal shootings per capita).

With this in mind, our goal with the campaign was never to stop the existence of gun torrents. We focused instead on trying to nudge an audience of curious kids and meet them with a peaceful message.

Unlike more traditional promotional techniques, our deceptive approach led us to a platform no advertiser would dare to touch – The Pirate Bay. Through a README-file embedded in our torrents, downloaders were incentivized to either keep sharing for further disruption of the listings and becoming a monthly donor at nonviolencesweden.com

We were also backed by music superstar Janice as an ambassador and protector of the initiative. Not only is she the official voice of the campaign, but also, quite coincidentally has the Non-Violence symbol tattooed on her body.

Within 24 hours, the project was broadcasted in Sweden's largest news outlets and was featured on some of the most influential sites in the global pro-gun community, exposing the other side to the message.

The campaign generated 40 million impressions, on a zero dollar media spend. That's four times the Swedish population.