Illiteracy is everywhere; in Germany four million people can neither read nor write. Alfa Telefone Germany’s official association for literacy hotline offers them consultations or counselling information on educational programmes. Depending mainly on private financing, the goal here was to appeal for funds to keep Alfa Telephone alive.

Via cost-free publishing thanks to the 'Frankfurter Rundschau', and widespread reporting in other media, charitable donations increased significantly after publication.

Newspapers depend, more than any other medium, on the capacity to read, especially as the daily press uses so few illustrations. Therefore an unreadable cover page makes you feel very uncomfortable and helpless, just as illiterates often do. Two explanatory ads within the same edition were used to ask readers to support illiterates and raise funds for Alfa Telephone.

As this newspaper approach was really unique and convincing, it garnered extremely widespread editiorial coverage was reported on national TV news.

Based on the insight that nobody who can read and write imagines what illiteracy is like, the appropriate media approach was to make people experience it themselves. Therefore, MediaCom convinced 'Frankfurter Rundschau', one of Germany’s leading newspapers, to publish, for the first time ever, an unreadable cover page (with a readable page behind), meaning that no reader missed the message. The confusion created by this made readers actively search for an answer, making them especially receptive to the two explanatory ads. As readers now felt the problem themselves, the importance of literacy had real personal relevance.