The Awakeners’ Team

The Awakeners’ Team is a pro-bono, integrated PR, digital, and gaming campaign for Teach For Bulgaria (Zaedno v chas Foundation) by Publicis Groupe Bulgaria (Digitas and MSL).

The campaign transformed Nov 1st – Bulgarian Awakeners’ Day from a symbolic commemoration into a participation event for modern education: a first-of-its-kind charity gaming tournament for education in Bulgaria, powered by AI-generated historical “players” and a localised football-game mod where national Awakeners compete as a real team.

Instead of asking people to “support education” (abstract, systemic), we invited them to join a team – through buying the team jersey or watching and donating live in-stream.

The result was a fast cultural breakthrough: in one month the campaign reached 4 000 000 people, delivered EUR 750 000 M earned media value with 0 paid PR budget, and produced record attention for the foundation, including 1 500 000 YouTube views in 3 weeks – equal to the channel’s previous 5 years combined.