Last month, Serbia was involved in #NoKosovoUnesco campaign against Kosovo’s UNESCO bid. Campaign achieved great success on Social Media and had excellent measurable results of which Netokracija wrote about.

 

But..

What caused me to wonder who is really behind this campaign is part of article in Danas: “Behind this petition is 28. June organization with its headquarters in Canada. One of its initiators, Filip Filipi Janković who lives in Canada, explains how did he and the Serbian-Canadian director boris Malagurski came up with the idea to initiate Serbs from all over the world and unite them with the same intent – no to Unesco!“

Initially, #NoKosovoUnesco hashtag first appeared on October 12 only to have the support of the Presidency of Serbia 24 hours later. On October 16, organization 28. June started an online petition with its goal to collect 100,000 signatures in order to put pressure on UNESCO not to admit Kosovo – a campaign that caused a respectable success and a future case study from which we can learn a lot about making digital marketing strategy with great accomplishment.

All over the internet and in traditional media, people stated that campaign was organized by spontanious initiative and then, on October 23, there was an article on LinkedIn, titled „How to reach 3 mil people in 3 days with a $300 budget“ in which the author wrote about all the details of starting #NoKosovoUnesco campaign and its realization. This article was written by Filip Filipi Janković, one of the founders of 28. June organization, who is also a Digital Media Consultant at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Serbia.

So, there’s the question from the title: Is #NoKosovoUnesco a political campaign and, if so, why not openly say it? Could it be that the results would have been much different if it was known all along that it is a government campaign instead of supposedly initiative from the Twitter users?

 

 

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