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How Caritas Used a Social Experiment to Put Exclusion on Screen
"Left Out" is a digital public interest campaign created by Berlin agency Glow for Caritas and released in Germany in December 2018, using a social experiment documentary format to confront the emotional and social consequences of exclusion, framed within the organisation's broader annual theme of affordable housing and the belief that everybody needs a home.
Caritas is one of Germany's most established social welfare organisations, operating across a wide network of community services and advocacy programmes. The 2018 campaign arrived during a period when rising rents and a shortage of affordable housing had become, as noted on caritas.de, a social reality carrying genuine potential for sociopolitical conflict. Against that backdrop, Glow chose not to produce a conventional charity appeal. Instead, the agency constructed a scenario designed to make the experience of being left out tangible and immediate for viewers. The single media asset at the centre of the campaign is a digital film, documented in the Ads of the World archive, that positions inclusion not as an abstract policy ideal but as something felt in ordinary moments of belonging and rejection.
In Germany, where Caritas sits alongside major peer organisations including Diakonie Deutschland and Aktion Mensch in the public interest sector, standing out during the saturated charity communication window around Christmas requires creative conviction. "Left Out" pursued that distinctiveness through the social experiment form, inviting audiences to observe rather than simply be told. The campaign carried the tagline that Caritas, as described by Ads of the World, normally fights for inclusion — and this film made that fight visible. The Clapboard Score for "Left Out" is 63 out of 100, reflecting a campaign with clear strategic clarity and emotional intentionality, evaluated against the platform's global archive of public service creative work.
Caritas grounded the "Left Out" campaign in a specific social diagnosis. According to caritas.de, the organisation identified rising rents and a lack of affordable housing as the defining social reality of the moment, with the potential to generate sociopolitical conflict in Germany. Rather than address the housing question through statistics or policy argument, Glow translated it into its human consequence: the feeling of being excluded, of not belonging, of being left out. That emotional reframe is the strategic core of the campaign.
The choice of a social experiment documentary format reflects a clear understanding of how public interest content travels in a digital environment. In Germany, the broader public service communication landscape includes well-resourced organisations such as Diakonie Deutschland, Arbeiterwohlfahrt, and Deutsches Rotes Kreuz, all of which compete for public attention and donor empathy during the Christmas period. Aktion Mensch has historically invested heavily in emotional Christmas films. Within that competitive context, Glow's decision to document a constructed real-world scenario rather than script a narrative film gave "Left Out" a register of authenticity that polished production alone cannot manufacture.
The campaign also sits within a longer strategic relationship. According to reporting archived at glow-berlin.de and horizont.net, Glow won the Caritas account in a competitive pitch in early 2015 and immediately began work on a multi-year initiative. The agency's 2015 campaign, "Fülle dein Land mit Leben!" — Fill Your Country with Life — addressed demographic change and rural population decline through a dramatic television film, as noted by horizont.net. "Left Out" in 2018 represents a continuation of that relationship, with the creative approach evolving from dramatic narrative toward observational documentary, and the thematic focus shifting from community decline to individual exclusion and the need for inclusion.
Director Christoph Bauer led the production of "Left Out," bringing a social experiment to life through an approach that relies on observed behaviour rather than scripted performance. The film's power derives from the gap between what its subjects know and what the audience sees — a structural device that documentary and hidden-camera formats have long used to generate genuine emotional response. Bauer's direction holds that tension with restraint, allowing moments to develop without editorial intervention that would undercut their authenticity.
Creative Director Johannes Krempl and Art Director Janine Wagner shaped the visual and conceptual identity of the campaign, while Copywriter Ines Lechleitner gave the piece its linguistic frame — the language of inclusion, of fighting for belonging, and of the simple human need for a home. The production required a careful balance: the social experiment format depends on situations feeling unmanipulated, which places significant demands on direction, camera work, and the editorial decisions made in post-production.
Post-production was handled by Liam Salzmann and Yassemin Ayed, whose work on the single digital asset needed to preserve the quality of spontaneity while still shaping a coherent and emotionally legible narrative arc. In a campaign built around authentic reaction, the editing room is where meaning is ultimately made — the pacing of revelations, the selection of moments, and the decisions about what to withhold all determine whether a social experiment film lands as manipulative or genuinely illuminating. As documented on Ads of the World, the finished piece was released in Germany in December 2018 and archived as part of the global record of public interest advertising creative work, submitted through the Clapboard platform over six years ago.
No verified performance data for the "Left Out" campaign is publicly available. Caritas and Glow have not published audited figures for views, engagement, or conversion outcomes in connection with this film, and no independent measurement source has documented its reach metrics. What can be assessed is the structural effectiveness of the creative approach against the campaign's stated objectives.
"Left Out" was built to do something specific: make the experience of exclusion emotionally legible in a way that connects housing inequality to personal feeling. The social experiment format is well suited to that goal because it generates reactions that audiences recognise as unperformed. In the German public interest market, where organisations including Diakonie Deutschland and Aktion Mensch have trained audiences to expect high-production emotional films at Christmas, a documentary register carries a different kind of credibility.
The campaign's single digital asset is its entire communicative vehicle. That concentration of effort into one piece of content is a structural choice that prioritises depth over reach — the assumption being that a film capable of genuine emotional impact will travel through sharing rather than paid distribution alone. According to caritas-germany.org, Caritas maintains a substantial and long-established presence across German civil society, which provides an existing audience infrastructure through which a digital film of this kind can circulate. The Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100 reflects a campaign that demonstrates real strategic and emotional coherence, even without documented performance outcomes to validate the reach its design implies.
"Left Out" is a digital public interest campaign created by Glow Berlin for Caritas and released in Germany in December 2018. It uses a social experiment documentary format to confront the emotional reality of exclusion, connected to Caritas's broader 2018 theme that everybody needs a home and affordable housing is a social right.
Glow, a Berlin-based advertising agency, created "Left Out" for Caritas. Glow had held the Caritas account since winning a competitive pitch in early 2015, according to records at glow-berlin.de and horizont.net, and the 2018 campaign continued a multi-year creative relationship between the two organisations centred on social awareness themes.
Christoph Bauer directed "Left Out" for Caritas and Glow. The creative team also included Creative Director Johannes Krempl, Art Director Janine Wagner, and Copywriter Ines Lechleitner. Post-production was handled by Liam Salzmann and Yassemin Ayed. The campaign is archived on Ads of the World and on the Clapboard platform.
Caritas's 2018 campaign focused on inclusion and affordable housing under the theme that everybody needs a home. According to caritas.de, the organisation identified rising rents and a shortage of affordable housing as a social reality with potential for sociopolitical conflict in Germany, which the "Left Out" film translated into an emotional argument for belonging.
"Left Out" used a social experiment documentary format, distinguishing it from the scripted emotional narrative films favoured by German public interest peers such as Aktion Mensch and Diakonie Deutschland. Where competitors often rely on high-production storytelling, Glow chose observed authenticity, giving the Caritas campaign a different register of credibility in a crowded December media environment.
"Left Out" received a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's clear strategic rationale and emotional intentionality within the public interest category, assessed against the global archive of advertising creative work on the Clapboard platform, where the campaign has been documented since its submission more than six years ago.
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