Ground News shows how every side covers the same story. With the 2020 election coming and no media budget, it asked Buena for a launch idea big enough to spread for free.
Most people don’t choose their news anymore. A feed chooses it for them. Ground News was built to fix that, and this spring it brought Buena a launch brief with a deadline that couldn’t move: the 2020 US presidential election.
Ground News is a news comparison app. Pick a story and it shows you how outlets across the political spectrum are covering it, and how biased each one is. Instead of one version of events, you get all of them side by side, and you judge for yourself.
The problem it takes on is bigger than any one headline. Most people get their news from social feeds, and those feeds reward whatever makes you angry enough to post, view and argue. The result is a country split into silos, each hearing only what it already wants to hear.
Ground News wanted a launch campaign timed to the election, with a media budget of zero. That is the kind of brief Buena exists for.
What the brief asked for
We set three rules for whatever we made.
Name the real culprit
Not the left or the right, but the algorithm deciding what everyone sees.
Talk to every side
The idea has to land with viewers of every channel, not just one.
Ask for one change
Stop letting a feed pick your news. Judge for yourself.
Buena wrote the brief in June 2020 and pitched four rounds of ideas. The one that stuck was News That Doesn’t Zuck: a film in which famous anchors from Fox, MSNBC, CNN and HLN all deliver the news wearing Mark Zuckerberg’s face, because no matter who reads it to you, the feed decides whether you see it.
The film was scripted, directed by Cale Henderson with production company Pooto, and its face swaps went through 13 drafts before a confidential teaser was cut in August 2021. The whole story is on the case page.
Ground News and Buena
Spring 2020
The brief
Ground News asks for an election launch campaign with no media budget.
June 2020
The creative brief
Buena sets the goal: more than a million free impressions among 25 to 35 year olds.
October 2020
The script
The 1:35 film reaches version 3.4.
August 2021
The teaser
The latest cut of News That Doesn’t Zuck is finished.
The end line said what Ground News stands for in six words, and it still does: no algorithms, transparent bias, judge for yourself.
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