50 000 Likes within the first 2 weeks.

More than 7 500 shares.

More than 6 500 comments (and hundreds of questions answered by the museum).

9 million people heard about Leon.

The french National Board of Education relayed Leon's page.

+45% of visitors in the museum.

3 million euros of earned media :

- TV : France 2, France 3, Canal+, BFM TV, France 24...

- Radio : Europe1, France Inter, Radio France...

- Internet : The Huffington Post, LCI, Rue 89, Le Nouvel Obs...

- Press : Le Monde, Le Point, Le Parisien, Le Figaro, Marianne...

All for the cost of 400 printed invitations to the press conference : 250 euros.

We did not create a usual brand page about history, but a page that looked like a personal profile: Leon Vivien’s one. An ordinary young guy torn apart from his family to be thrown into WW1’s slaughter. And day after day, week after week, we told his life through hundreds of posts illustrated by dozens of documents picked from the museum collection.

On the 10th of April 2013, we held a huge press conference. Journalists had been sent an invitation looking like the French draft notification of 1914. Ten month of posts were already available on the profile and from this day, we added some new ones everyday.

We turned history into a human story that anyone could follow like a series with twists and turns. A story that made the young Frenchies subtly realize how lucky they were to live in a peaceful country.

The Museum of the Great War opened in 2011 with a double aim: to offer a new vision of World War 1, a more «shoulder-high» vision, and of course to promote the duty to remember. That is why they wanted so much to connect with the young generation.

Now, it is a fact: in France as in many other parts of the world, the young people spend more time on the social networks than in war museums. So, we had to find a new way to get them interested in WW1.

Facebook seemed the perfect place to target them: this is where they tell nearly everything about their life. Their carefree, peaceful life. So, we thought: what if Facebook had existed in 1914? Imagine what they would have posted !