Celebrity ‘Deaths’ Commemorated for WW1 Centenary

It’s estimated that over a million UK soldiers and civilians lost their lives during the First World War, but with 100 years since the moment Britain declared war on Germany, it can be hard to put such a significant figure into perspective.

However, a poignant campaign through RKCR/Y&R London, launched to coincide with the anniversary of the start of the First World War, has sparked the largest act of commemoration the UK has ever known and seeks to remember every fallen soldier in the conflict.

"Over 1.1 million Commonwealth servicemen died in WW1,” considers copywriter on the project, Pemba Kinstan. “That’s such a large figure it’s easy to forget that every one of them was a person just like you; someone’s father, someone’s son.”

Spearheaded by five print ads which cleverly pays tribute to the ‘deaths’ of celebrities in today’s world, pairing them up with their true namesakes that fell for Britain, the campaign also includes an interactive website which allows users to commemorate real war heroes and even their own relatives.

'With a limited media budget and most of the ads being small space, we needed an idea that would still grab everyone's attention,” explains Andy Amadeo, creative director at RKCR/Y&R. “Finding fallen war heroes with the same names as A-list celebrities was a gift and by carefully placing the ads next to articles relating to those celebrities, we gave ourselves the best chance possible of being noticed."

“There’s a real power in telling the individual stories,” adds Kinstan. “We need people to understand the scale, but also have a personal story to connect with. To get people to notice the ads the key was to have them feel real, like the newspaper’s announcing a death, not just running an ad.”

Alex Ferguson, Gordon Brown, Tom Jones, Harry Styles and Andy Murray are those who feature in the print ads in bold form before fine print puts the placement into context with background about their true namesakes who fell in the War.

Readers are then directed to a dedicated website, Every Man Remembered, where they are invited to commemorate someone they know by searching a unique database of names and tracing their history. Those without known knowledge or attachment to specific people however can still enter messages of condolence and are invited to place a poppy to the name they select.

“The Royal British Legion did an incredible job to pull together the Every Man Remembered website. The more you search through it, the more you realise how much we have in common with these fallen soldiers,” Kinstan concludes.

“There’re soldiers from my town, soldiers with the same name as my brother and father. If I was born 100 years ago, I would probably be on the list too. If you were born 100 years ago, chances are you would be. That’s a frightening thought, but you can’t say it’s not powerful.”