El Bocón, the leading sports newspaper in Peru, wanted to convey a compelling message against violence in soccer stadiums.

The trigger was a widely publicised episode in which yet another innocent life had been gruesomely claimed; even forcing the government to decree that Championship matches should be closed to the public.

This situation was bad both for soccer itself and for a newspaper whose main source of news was this particular sport. The brief was clear: make people react against violence, get them committed so the government won’t need to further intervene.

The creative strategic solution was to used El Bocón Sports Journal owned media and eliminate all news stories related to football in order to deliver a strong message.

There was a main channel and that was the Newspaper itself. This generated free impressions in other mediums such as television, print and digital. The absence of football news in a football newspaper is a story in itself.

On the day of the activation we were able to sell 150,000 copies. In addition the message reached approximately 1.2 million people.

The goal had nothing to do with money, but more to do with delivering a message and being an agent of change.

On any given day at least 5,000 copies are returned. The entire supply of the Empty Pages edition managed to sell out completely.