Reporters Without Borders: "The Voice" Direct marketing by Publicis Brussels

Type of Entry: Use of Direct Marketing
Category: Direct Response Digital: Mobile Marketing
Title: THE VOICE
Advertiser/Client: REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS
Product/Service: NON GOVERNMENTAL ORGANISATION
Entrant Company: PUBLICIS BRUSSELS, BELGIUM
DM/Advertising Agency: PUBLICIS BRUSSELS, BELGIUM
Copywriter: Kwint Demeyer
Art Director: Daniel Vandenbroucke
Creative Director: Paul Servaes
Creative Director: Alain Janssens
Agency Producer: Dominique Ruys
Digital Account Director: Nadia Dafir
Webdesign Development: Denis Evlard
Shooting/Editing: Dimitri Ryelandt
Account manager: Mikaël Ogor
Strategic Planner: Vincent d’Halluin
Strategic Planner: Tom Theys
Photographer: Getty Images
Translator: Fabrice Storti
Translator: Richard Welss
Sound Studio: Think'n Talk
Production Company: Rabbit Brussels
Director/Producer: Gunther Campine
Executive Producer: Ruben Goots
D.O.P: Kassim Ahmed
Editor: Jan Hameeuw
Visual Effects/Post production: The Fridge
Sound Design: Yves De Mey@Sonicville
Describe the brief from the client:
Press freedom seems more than normal for people living in Belgium. The death of two photographers in Lybia last April painfully showed us that press freedom is still in danger. Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF/ Reporters without Borders) wanted to approach people in a direct way to show them why press freedom is important for everyone.
Creative Execution:
We wanted to reach traditional newspaper readers, as they value independent journalism, but might not realize how dangerous a journalist’s life can be in some countries. Since we had true stories to tell, we had to find a way to reach newspapers readers and tell them true stories. That’s when we came up with the idea of merging the forces of 2 worlds: the stopping power of a powerful image in a press ad, combined with the unique opportunities of mobile/ digital communication.
This didn’t only enable us to tell the true stories of the journalists in a compelling way. It also gave us the chance to redirect people to our website, where they could learn more about our activities. And where they could support us by ordering the book “100 pictures for press freedom”.
Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.
We created the first talking print ad. The ad showed a predator of press freedom (Gadaffi, Putin, Ahmadinedjad) , with a QR code in the bottom corner. By scanning this code and putting your iPhone on the mouth of the predator, you could hear a journalist tell the true story of that country.
Describe the results in as much detail as possible.
Our campaign flew all over the world, reaching people far beyond Belgium. We thought it was most interesting to see how people from Iran and Lybia, who found a clear symbol for their own battle in our campaign, spread the ad massively. It was largely shared on social networks and made people speak about the matter of ‘press freedom’, one of our main aims. The first results also show a peak in the sales of the RSF book (donations 25% up), as well as a big progress in the number of Twitter/ Facebook followers. Since we launched this campaign after the death of the 2 photographers in April, it is too early to quantify the exact impact of the campaign, but it looks like it will be huge.