2015 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

Lebanese politicians are part of ‘Lebanon4Sale’s’’ (a retail environment created by the agency where everything is for sale, even civic rights) main clientele, thinking that the citizens rights are for sale to the highest bidder. On the new year, and for the first time, we wanted to send all politicians a direct message that would pressure them publicly to denounce corruption. We made sure the media was well aware of our act before hand, first covering the act on the main news segments and consequently confronting politicians about it through interviews.

The Brief

Our objectives was to develop a platform that will encourage people to report corruption and quantify incidents involving corrupt practices in Lebanon with the ultimate aim of raising the public debate and exert pressure on politicians to respond. From research we knew that people were skeptic to the concept of “fighting corruption”, We couldn’t invite people to fight corruption: the word itself is too intimidating and abstract. But thinking of closing down a business is easy and familiar. This is why we didn’t invite people to fight corruption, we invited them to let it go bankrupt.

Results

A total of 151 greeting cards were sent to 127 Members of Parliament, 24 Ministers, and 1 Minister only (The Lebanese Minister of Commerce) expressed a positive reaction to the act stating: ‘This ‘gift’ is an important message that highlights the need to tackle corruption as a high priority’. With minimal cost invested, this act generated USD 148,000 in free media value.

Execution

We sent a regular looking greeting card celebrating the festive season with a loaded message written on a fake USD 100 bill stating: ‘This is a loaded gift, refuse it to start building a proper state’. By sending our loaded gift directly to our politicians’ place of business, the parliament, amongst all other offerings they usually receive, we wanted to first trigger a sentiment of shame and second observe who would applaud the act’s audacity or who would condemn it. In other words, we wanted to single out the good apples from the bad ones.

The Situation

In Lebanon, corruption is intertwined within the entire system; this is why fighting such a beast seems, to most people, unthinkable, unnecessary or even useless. When our client came to us, they insisted on the fact that they didn’t want to raise awareness but get people to report. Because it’s only when enough reporting is done, that they can hold people accountable. Knowing that this campaign required such a behavioral change, it was clear that we were going to need more than a traditional campaign, but truly create a movement and a belief that corruption can be fought.

The Strategy

The Strategy consisted of: 1 - Creating an enemy: the guerilla campaign with wall tags and posters as well as the opening of the shops all aimed at getting people’s attention and starting the conversation. 2 - The call to action: the online movie and the poster aimed to build on that anger and invite people to do something about it with the call to action “stop the shop” 3- Closing the deal: once we got people to our reporting page, everything was designed to ensure they finish the journey and do not drop out half way. We ensured the website was dynamic and the journey intuitive and created a virtual map of Lebanon that allowed people to see the live status of corruption – a tangible consequence of their reporting.