| Cannes Lions 2013 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Design Lions | Posters | Silver |
Advertiser: STOPRHINOPOACHING.COM
Agency: TBWA\HUNT\LASCARIS JOHANNESBURG
Category: Best Use of Ambient Media: Small Scale
Advertising campaign: THE RHINO STAMP PROJECT
Copywriter: Charles Pantland (TBWA Hunt Lascaris Johannesburg)
Photographer: Des Ellis (Des Ellis Photography)
Executive Creative Director: Adam Livesey (TBWA Hunt Lascaris Johannesburg)
Account Manager: Fiona Chapman (TBWA Hunt Lascaris Johannesburg)
Executive Creative Director: Matthew Brink (TBWA Hunt Lascaris Johannesburg)
Director Of Photography: Brett De Vos
Agency Producer: Carol Soames (TBWA Hunt Lascaris Johannesburg)
Agency Producer: Craig Walker (E-Graphics)
Designer: Kerry Moralee (TBWA Hunt Lascaris Johannesburg)
Creative Coordinator: Muriel Brink (TBWA Hunt Lascaris Johannesburg)
Art Director: Shane Forbes (TBWA Hunt Lascaris Johannesburg)
Execution
We needed to create something that would be under the “radar”, a Trojan horse - something that would be able to get into the responsible countries without political interference. So we decided to use age-old postage stamps and turn them into our new medium. We created the first ever South African stamp to have another country’s language on it, a stamp made in South Africa for another country. We also replaced the usual breathtaking imagery of South Africa’s animals with the carnage that poachers leave behind. Each stamp included a message in Chinese, Vietnamese or Thai reading: “say no to rhino horn”.We then used our stamps to create posters and stamp booklets, which became flyers, encouraging the South African public to attach a stamp to each and every letter they were sending to the countries involved in the rhino horn trade - a direct mailer from us to them.
Effectiveness
Overnight, thousands of stamps left our shores and achieved what no petition or awareness campaign could - they infiltrated borders and started a direct communication between our country and those involved in the rhino horn trade. Within days we were in the national press, television and radio. Then it spread across the world on the Internet. In the week of the rollout alone, we had made international news. We earned millions in unpaid media and Stop Rhino Poaching has experienced a traffic increase of over 300% on their website, the majority, coming from the countries that we targeted with our stamps.
Strategy
Poachers kill our rhinos for their horns to sell them on the black market. But the real problem is the people overseas that buy and use them. Our objective was to target the people in Vietnam, China and Thailand and show them what they were really doing. Unfortunately our new target market had minimal interaction with StopRhinoPoaching.com’s website, so we needed to find a way to get our communication to them in a form that they couldn’t ignore. Something they could hold in their hand that was addressed personally to them.