Category: Ambient Media & Print Collateral, Non-Mail (Small Scale)
Advertiser: OCCUPY GEORGE
Product/Service: OCCUPY GEORGE
Agency: OCCUPY GEORGE
Creative Director: Andy Dao (Occupy George)
Creative Director: Ivan Cash (Occupy George)
Web Developer: Scott Blew (Nowhe.re)
Media placement: Ambient Promotion - Out Of Home - October 15, 2011
Describe the brief/objective of the direct campaign.
CHALLENGE:
How do you get the general public to understand the fundamental issue of the Occupy movement?
Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective with reference to the projected response rates and desired outcome.
SOLUTION:
Hack the medium at the root of the frustrations: money. We used US dollars as our canvas to carry stamped facts about America's daunting wealth disparity. To make sure our stamps reached a broader audience, we attended protests to stamp on people's money. As they spent their money this empowered our project by spreading the information to a wider audience. To further maximise the number of participants, free downloadable templates, available at occupygeorge.com, enabled anyone with a home printer to take action.
Explain why the creative execution was relevant to the product or service.
The dollar that has divided people is now the medium that carries the message for the people. Until our project, the Occupy movement was about protesting in physical spaces. Now folks are able to show their support by Occupying their money. Each time a person spends an Occupied dollar, they're circulating facts about the waning health of our current economic state. For instance, someone might learn that just 400 of the wealthiest Americans have as much wealth as the poorest 150m Americans. Our goal was to prompt people to ask themselves, “How can this be?"
Describe the results in as much detail as possible with particular reference to the RESPONSE of the target audience including deliverability statistics, response rates, click throughs, sales cost per response, relationships built and overall return on investment.
OccupyGeorge.com launched via Facebook, and within hours, Gizmodo featured the project on their front page, and by that evening it had received a quarter of a million hits. From there, the project received a host of coverage and interview requests from TIME, The Guardian, NPR, and Fast Company— which created a 2-minute-long animated film about the project. More importantly, hundreds of emails came pouring in from around the world, supporting the project. Ben Cohen from Ben & Jerry's voiced his support. People in Europe created an off-shoot, OccupyEuro.com. Occupy groups from all around the globe reached out, and tens of thousands shared the site online.