When Rage-baiting Helped Save A Library 😅 #shorts

So this award-winning library was about to be unfairly shut down one day, but no one ever could have expected rage baiting to save the day. You see, right after the 2008 Great Recession, the city of Troy, Michigan realized that they could no longer afford to keep funding some services, like their public library. Even though the Troy Public Library had just been ranked 10th in the nation for its population class, the citizens of Troy had voted against the city's proposed 0.7% tax increase that would have saved the library's funding. Although most people were actually more than willing to pay to keep the library,

a local anti-tax oracle called Troy Citizens United basically just convinced everyone that any tax increase was bad without mentioning the library at all. So even though supporters of the library spent more than a year of their own unpaid time desperately spreading awareness, signing petitions, and even creating a proposal to independently fund the library, most citizens still ended up voting against this tax increase with no idea that their library would be lost in the process. But shortly after a closing date was finally set, locals just suddenly started seeing tons of signs being put up

advertising a Troy Library book burning party. This unknown company was apparently so happy that the library was being shut down they were hiring a clown and even an ice cream vendor just for this celebration event. They even posted ads in the local newspaper and started a Facebook page saying things like, the Troy Library may be short on money, but it has books to burn. And safe to say, the people of Troy were absolutely furious. They left countless comments saying,

you people are sick and this is disgusting. And the widespread outrage eventually got so big that the story even made international news. But literally right before the very last vote that could save the Troy Public Library, the organizers of this book burning event finally revealed that their real message was actually a vote against the library is like a vote to burn books. As it turns out, this whole thing had been a crazy marketing campaign run by a local ad agency called Leo Burnett.

Since they had realized that, a lot of people didn't even know the library was being shut down, they just came up with this fake infuriating event to force people to change the conversation from taxes back to libraries. As a result, turnout at that last vote apparently went up by 342%. And this time, the tax increase proposal was easily passed,

finally saving the library. finally saving the library. And Leo Burnett's ad later went on to win