Erste Group | #believeinyourself | 2018
Everyone Has Their Own "Hedgehog" / Erste Group "#believeinyourself"
A minute-and-a-half video you'll want to watch alone on a cold night. Henry the hedgehog quietly gets to you.
The problem
In 2018, Erste Group ran this Christmas campaign across five countries: Austria, Croatia, Romania, Hungary, and Serbia. A bank founded 200 years ago so that everyone could have the chance to save money made this film under the slogan "#believeinyourself".
The insight
Erste believed that the story of a hedgehog who can't make friends because of his spikes is really a story about the loneliness everyone feels at some point. According to CD Michael Nagy, it's a love story, a Christmas story, and an underdog story all rolled into one. The phrase "the hedgehog inside you" captures exactly the fear of being rejected.
The idea
Henry, a hedgehog who transfers to a school in the forest, keeps being avoided by his classmates because of his spikes. On Christmas Day, Henry is feeling down after being talked about behind his back - but his classmates are waiting for him. What they hand him are little foam corks, one for each spike. With these, he can finally be hugged.
What happened
The video got 1.5 million views in its first 24 hours, and eventually passed 150 million views in total. It was made by Jung von Matt/DONAU and Passion Animation Studios.
Afterthought
The moment you realize the spikes are a metaphor for the walls around our hearts, you think: oh, I have those too. Even though it's an ad for a bank, it speaks straight to the little Henry inside every one of us. Makes me want to watch it again tonight.
