The Berlin office of Ogilvy & Mather fights back against the republishing of Mein Kampf by publishing their own book, Mein Kampf gegen Rechts. After the Bavarian government’s copyright expired, Hitler’s notoriously fascist book Mein Kampf was republished in Germany this year, and Ogilvy & Mather decided to respond with Mein Kampf gegen Rechts (My Struggle Against Racism), to fight right-wing extremism and intolerance. From Adweek:
“Due to the immigration of refugees, we are facing in Germany a growing right-wing extremism and an open everyday racism,” Tim Stuebane, executive creative director at Ogilvy Berlin and leader of the book project, tells Adweek. “In the last election, a new right-wing party shot from 0 to 24 percent. All this is very painful to see. We had to do something against it, but what? Then we learned that Hitler’s Mein Kampf would be republished. We thought—absolutely the wrong signal at this point of time.”
The project seeks to “reclaim the conception of the words Mein Kampf from the Nazis [and] create a spectacular trigger for PR and social media to talk about the current situation of society in Germany” and elsewhere, Stuebane says.
Those missions have been largely accomplished. Clearly, Ogilvy’s book touched a nerve in Germany. The first printing of 11,000 volumes nearly sold out, with 1 euro from every sale supporting Gesicht Zeigen, a nonprofit group that fights for social justice.