N=5 & KPN Create 1940s Vlogger For Remembrance Day

What was the biggest decision you made today? Whether to have the falafel wrap or the sushi set for lunch? Or where to head on your next summer break?

In an era of almost unlimited opportunities and choices, it’s easy to take this freedom for granted, and more than sixty years after World War II, it seems the sacrifices of generations past are being forgotten. 

To mark Remembrance Day in the Netherlands and get the post-millennial audience to engage with the stories of war veterans, Dutch telecoms company KPN and Amsterdam indie shop N=5, have come up with a novel stunt by creating a new social media 'personality', Evert_45.

Posting about his family, food and what he's wearing, 13-year-old Evert seems like any other teenage vlogger - apart from the fact he's living in 1945 Nazi-occupied Holland, just a month before liberation. The immersive campaign plays out as a series on Instagram and YouTube, charting Evert's journey to find his brother, who's in hiding after escaping a German labour camp. From a checkpoint interrogation, to a dramatic plane crash, it's all captured in a series of vlogs and selfies, complete with obligatory hashtags and emojis (*scared face*).

Though some of the individual posts can feel a tad glib, the overall narrative, crafted from numerous interviews with World War II veterans, historians and teachers, lends the campaign a sense of authenticity. And taking a more modern approach to storytelling seems to have paid off with the target audience: the campaign reached 50 per cent of Dutch teenagers in the first two weeks and has generated hundreds of comments and likes. It's proved so successful, in fact, that there are plans to include Evert_45 in the Dutch school curriculum next year.

Commenting on the campaign, N=5's strategy director Silvia van Hooft said: “If you speak with anyone who lived through WWII – especially those brave enough to fight in the resistance – you immediately know that the powerful stories already exist. We just needed to find a creative way to connect people who were young in 1945 with people who are young today. With Evert_45 we’re trying to bridge that gap, and it seems to be working." 

To view the campaign in full, visit evert45.com.