2018 Winners & Shortlists

SKINS OF PEACE

BrandAMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
Product/ServiceAMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
EntrantTBWA\RAAD Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
CategoryIllustration
Idea Creation TBWA\RAAD Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Media Placement OMD Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Production CAPITAL D Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Additional Company FACEBOOK DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

The Campaign

With a tiny budget to tackle an enormous challenge, we had to come up with an idea so creative it could live on its own. If Islam was being misconstrued for being violent and Muslims were treated as a travel threat, merely claiming the opposite would’ve never sufficed. For our idea to be impactful, we needed evidence from Islam itself that could travel the world to spread the word when Muslims couldn’t. The idea was powerfully simple: transform passports into messages of peace. Accordingly, we looked into The Quran, Islam’s Holy Book, as the sole source and true bearer of the essence of this religion, for verses that relay tolerance and acceptance. These verses (in English) would be beautifully transformed into passport holders and would be known as the Skins of Peace.

Creative Execution

The online launch film illustrated the whole story while enticing people to contribute their designs to the website. To ensure consistency of the message, we provided people with the Skins of Peace specs including the size, 15 quotes to choose from and a mandatory hashtag to be part of the design. These designs were a variety of Arabesque, modern, calligraphy, geometric and illustration styles. The colors were bright and attractive. After all, although they’re carrying a noble message, the skins needed to be aesthetically pleasing and fashionable. Working with world-renowned origami artist Robert Lang, we developed a painfully easy 4-step fold that turns any of the 50 crowdsourced A4 printed designs into sturdy passport covers. To generate more buzz and establish relevancy, we launched our campaign on December 18th, International Migrants Day. Over the span of 1 month, we released short format tutorials and posts to drive downloads.

Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market

SkinsofPeace.com registered hundreds of daily visitors. Content films and posts received a 120% higher engagement rate than any previous Amnesty International post. Design downloads to date exceeded a total of 20,000 from over 11 countries. This was aided by the wide regional and global earned media exposure the idea received: Arabian Marketer, Arab Ad, Creativity Online, The Culture Pub, Ads of the World, Communicate, Latin Spots, The Drum’s round-up for the most creative work and Campaign Magazine’s Top 30 Campaign for 2017 to name a few helped garner international coverage in English, Arabic, French and Spanish to expose and mobilize even more people around this cause. Online listening reports registered more than 90% positive sentiment around the idea among our target audience. Most importantly however, we got the world to see, hear and spread our message of tolerance and acceptance: Islam is peace.

Because we’re targeting a vast demographic and psychographic audience across the globe, we didn’t want this to be a “for-us, by-us strategy.” And because we sought inclusion, we wanted to practice it in our approach. The designs would be crowdsourced from designers across the world as a per-stage for the campaign. Then, in collaboration with Facebook, the campaign would launch on Amnesty International’s social pages using Facebook’s 70/20/10 posting rule. This would mean a series of content pieces ranging from explaining the situation to promoting the campaign and “how-to” tutorials. All the developed content drove people to the campaign website (skinsofpeace.com) where they could print their favorite designs and easily turn them into personal passport holders. This approach guaranteed that our idea would have no home or owner, but instead would exist everywhere and take on a life of its own while enabling Muslims and non-Muslims alike to participate.

Credits

Name Company Role
Walid Kanaan TBWA\RAAD Chief Creative Officer
Fouad Abdel Malak TBWA\RAAD Executive Creative Director
Manuel Borde TBWA\RAAD Creative Director
Alex Pineda TBWA\RAAD Copywriter ACD
Clayton Needham TBWA\RAAD Senior Digital Designer
Oswaldo Sa TBWA\RAAD Art Director ACD
Debora Andreucci TBWA\RAAD Digital Designer
Claudio Campisto TBWA\RAAD Head of Art
Ali Cheikhali TBWA\RAAD Senior Strategic Planner
Mônica Yuri / Esra Tasdemir / Nev Fordyce / Enzo Giacomin / Jonathan Mak / Amiru - Designer
Hazem Atieh / Ezzat Habra TBWA\RAAD Creative Services Managers
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