UNDERCOVER
Ekstra Bladet has a strong heritage in crime journalism, but the category has changed. The commercial challenge was to drive subscription sales in a saturated market, while the brand challenge was to maintain the newspaper's authority. At the same time, we observed a significant behavioral shift in the underworld: drug trafficking had moved from the streets onto digital platforms like Snapchat, Telegram, and Signal, where dealers operated openly using modern marketing logics, emojis, and coded language.
We adopted the dealers' precise language, tone, emojis, and visual systems, and rolled out the campaign on the exact platforms where the illegal trade was already taking place: Telegram, Snapchat, Instagram, Signal, and Reddit, supported by outdoor and print advertising. Each execution looked like authentic ads from criminals. But instead of selling drugs and stolen goods, they acted as a Trojan horse, leading users directly to Ekstra Bladet's in-depth journalism, which exposed the networks behind them.