Objectives:

To highlight the situation for refugee children in Sweden in earned media, with a gross reach of 5 million (half of Sweden’s population) and get on the agenda of media and politicians.

Get 15 000 swedes to sign a petition to make the UN Convention of the child a Swedish law.

Make the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) a Swedish law.

Strategy

Our strategy was to get emotional. In Sweden we read about misfortunate children every day. What we don’t get to see are the thousands of refugee children arriving to Sweden, forced to travel elsewhere. We wanted to shed light on these children’s situation in a new way. Doing that, we needed to combine what we see everyday with what we don’t.

Idea

Instead of being influenced by NGO-communication we turned to art. We discovered a way of casting a light on the refugee children in a way no one could miss them, still protecting their integrity.

We projected moving light silhouettes of children on facades in the streets of Stockholm. Our ghostlike projections appeared on benches, climbing stairs, walking slowly in places with a lot of people. The last day of the campaign we projected the images on the Parliament building.

We directed our audience to Instagram and Twitter and to our campaign site where Swedes could sign a petition to make CRC a Swedish law.

Results

Our campaign got an earned media reach of 25M – five times the target from UNICEF.

During the campaign period of two weeks 37 000 signed our petition to make CRC a Swedish law and since then, 12 000 more have signed the petition.

In September 2014 the Social Democrats won the election and in October the government decided to make CRC a Swedish law – just in time for the 25 year birthday of the UN convention on the Rights of the Child.