"Letter Theft"

With a decades-long run of boundary-pushing, off-beat advertising, HORNBACH has established itself as the DIY-and gardening megastore with a creative rebel spirit. And a brand that enables and encourages customers all over Europe to be their most daring, inventive, creative selves. Which has turned HORNBACH into perhaps the only hardware store with a base of genuine devoted fans. Who maybe went a little too far in autumn 2022: overnight, letters disappeared from signboards at HORNBACH stores in locations from Prague to Amsterdam. The letters reappeared: in Twitch streams, as part of avant-garde art performances, in galleries, even as a boat in the canals of Amsterdam. But most of all, in community posts, on TikTok, and on Twitter. Resulting in a campaign that wasn’t just broadcast but created together. While fans debated the reasons for the missing letters – from a marketing stunt to corporate sabotage or a UFO abduction –a film appeared that shed light on the matter: with an almost 5-minute-long documentary, HORNBACH identified the crew of creatives behind the theft and portrays the movement they inadvertently started by claiming the values that they see reflected in everything the letters stand for: creativity, possibility, skills. And the belief that great projects can come from even the most unlikely material.