SeSocio and Fundación Bomberos de Argentina Take Over Mistaken Domain Names with Environmental News

Argentina has suffered large native forest fires that have affected more than one million hectares in recent years. Although firefighters have fought tirelessly to fight them, the news did not always receive the media coverage that the seriousness and relevance of the issue deserved, making it difficult to count on the support in donations that was needed.

The idea sought to solve this unforgivable mistake by capitalising on another mistake. The campaign took over domains like those of the main news media, imitating users' most common typing errors to enter the same news websites. By mistakenly entering these domains, people could find a version of the news site but with a fundamental difference, this time the media was filled with news of the fires to generate awareness and raise funds for volunteer firefighters through the donation button on the SeSocio platform.  

"With THE RIGHT MISTYPE, we seek to raise awareness about the importance that news about forest fires should have in the media. We managed to demonstrate that with one mistake we can solve a much more dangerous one, the one made by the media when they give a minimum amount of coverage to the fires taking place in our forests. The results still surprise us, since many readers of the main media are collaborating with donations, and this is very satisfactory for us", commented Damián Palopoli and Santiago Ledesma, creative directors of the campaign.

"The beauty of this idea was to find the solution from a hack. We could not change the front pages of the main news sites, but we could impact thousands of people who were looking for information, bringing them the most relevant news of the moment, the drama of our forests", added María Luján Donaire, general creative director of HOY Buenos Aires.

The campaign achieved its goal and more, increasing donations on the site by +353%.