In his tweet, Mr. Sanders said that it’s unacceptable for Bucharest, Romania to have faster internet than the US. So we created a fun tool that calculates the internet speed, so that anyone in the world can see how much faster/slower their internet speed really is compared to Bucharest’s average and see what Mr. Sanders’ reaction to that would be. Then, we also linked the site to the portal Bucharest2021 – The European Capital of Culture, so people can see that Bucharest has so much more to offer than just fast internet. In other words, we literally used our internet speed to give Bucharest the positive global exposure it deserves.

We spent only $520 on hosting, traffic and maintenance and gained more than $1.000.000 in free media from major national and international TV channels and publications.

www.berniespeedtest.com was created and launched in under 10 hours. We developed the internet speed test algorithm from scratch and wrote over 30 meme-like reactions from Bernie, 6-7 different ones for each internet speed interval - below 20 Mbps, 20-30 Mbps, 30-40 Mbps, 40-60 Mbps and above 60 Mbps. We launched it on the night between March 3rd and March 4th. Then, we added a link to the Bucharest2021 portal, so people can discover more about our city than just the internet speed.

In one simple Facebook share, the website went instantly viral: on the first day alone, we had 130.000 unique visitors from 172 countries (out of 193 countries in the world). It was on prime-time news material on EVERY national tv channel and the story got picked up by major international press publications, like CNN, CNN España, NBC, CBS, ABC, getting more than $1 million worth of free media. And all of this for just $520 spent on hosting and traffic services.

The website was a fast and direct response to Bernie Sanders tweet that turned a PR slip into a success story. We literally used our internet speed to give Bucharest a positive and global exposure.

The reactions to Mr. Sanders’ tweet were extreme. Many were offended, while others cracked jokes. Our response saw the positive side of his tweet and, in a fun and non-condescending way, we let everyone check for themselves if their internet speed really is slower than in Bucharest. Since people of the world don’t know many things about a city which is a candidate for the European City of Culture, we literally used its internet speed to give Bucharest the positive global exposure it deserves.

On March 3rd, the US Presidential candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders tweeted that it’s unacceptable for Bucharest, Romania to have faster internet than the US. This sparked a lot of national and international controversy, as many people took offense to the tweet. However, we saw an opportunity to promote our city, especially now that Bucharest is a candidate for the European Capital of Culture. So, in under 10 hours, we created and launched www.berniespeedtest.com as a direct response to Mr. Sanders’ tweet. It’s a website that allows everyone in the world to measure their internet speed and compare it to Bucharest’s average (50 Mbps), while showing a meme-like reaction of Bernie, depending on the speed. Even more, we added a direct link to the Bucharest2021 website, so people from all over the world can discover that Bucharest has so much more to offer than just fast internet.