For the 5th Music Festival of Cartagena Y&R Colombia wanted to unite thousands of people with a single idea: music is powerful, and people working together on a mission are too.

To prove it, we came up with a social experiment that merged art, technology and, of course, lots of people:A refurbished cello was sunk in the Caribbean Sea off Cartagena from a ship. The ship’s crew included a biologist, sailors and a team of divers who worked together to lower the cello 150 feet into the depths. What was the point? The aim was to get people to inch the instrument up to the surface centimeter by centimeter through the Internet, so a little girl could have it to perform with in one of the festival’s concerts, and to put the power of the people to the test.To do this, we created a web page linked to Facebook. Whenever a person donated his or her status, the crew brought the cello up 1 centimeter. This initiative brought together a lot of people to take part in worthwhile cause, and got the Festival on the front pages again.

We took a cello and recorded a range of notes. Each of these notes would then be transmitted separately by radio stations in Cartagena to allow people to make music with the radio dial when jumping from station to station. To promote this idea we issued a news spot encouraging people to be attentive to their favorite stations and on December 27, at five o’clock the most popular radio stations came together during two minutes, and gave people the opportunity to make music playing THE FREQUENCELLO.

The results were staggering: the streets of Cartagena where filled with music as people came together with their radios and played with THE FREQUENCELLO. We not only created a radio spot, we created a citywide event making the entire city make music and transform a traditional radio into a unique musical instrument. Many songs were created as people played THE FREQUENCELLO with their radio. We were able to bring the Festival to its primary audience, the people of Cartagena. And in just two minutes we were able to prove that music is for everyone.