How refugees in Germany use advertising to target racism and anti-immigrant YouTube Videos

A group of refugees in Germany has come up with a very effective strategy to fight racism and stereotypes about refugees.

Flüchtlinge Willkommen (Refugees Welcome) partnered with FCB Zurich to create “Search racism. Find truth”, a campaign against hate and prejudice.

The media placement specifically targets those looking for racist and anti-immigration videos.

Anyone looking up for hate videos is met with a pre-roll ‘ad’ featuring refugees sharing their real experiences counteracting such hate videos.

Mareike Geiling, a founder of “Refugees Welcome”, has experienced a lot of things in her day to day life. But nothing remotely like what the vicious hate preachers claim in their videos. That’s why it was important to “Refugees Welcome” to try to counteract this hate and prejudice.

For example, the YouTube user looking for the right-wing group PEGIDA will have to first watch a video by “Refugees Welcome” because such clips cannot be skipped. The user is forced to listen to the arguments of the “Refugees Welcome” in full length. All the clips anticipate the content of the video that follows and then rebut the prejudices in them.

The clips show that refugees make a lot of efforts to learn the local language and culture.

Click here to watch refugees tell their stories.