Cannes Lions

Faces of Freedom

SCHOLZ & FRIENDS, Berlin / AXEL SPRINGER FREEDOM FOUNDATION / 2024

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Overview

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OVERVIEW

Background

There are one million political prisoners worldwide. Russia and China are among the leading nations in this sad statistic. Dictatorships do everything they can to silence their worst critics. The Navalny case has shown just how far they will go. It has never been so important to draw attention to the innocent prisoners and their fight for freedom and confronting the regimes directly.

Idea

The faces of the dissidents Vladimir Kara-Murza and Jimmy Lai were projected onto the facades of the Russian and Chinese embassies - with a surprising visual twist. Thanks to the interplay of light, shadow and architecture, viewers get the feeling that the dissidents are literally imprisoned inside the building.

Strategy

The target group is the general German population. The campaign was carried out in two night-time operations and implemented at 4 embassies, focusing on Russia's and China's embassies The campaign referred to a online petition under adressfreedom.com that promotes the change of the street names in front of said embassies into the names of dissidents such as Kara-Murza and Lai.

Execution

The campaign was accompanied and promoted by media partners and the relatives of the prisoners, as well as local politicians. The main channels here were print and online media as well as social media and the private accounts of the aforementioned supporters.

Outcome

The campaign referred to a petition to have the street names in front of embassies of dictatorships in Berlin changed to the names of the enemies of these states. The petition has so far received over 40,000 signatures. Major German media reported on the campaign. Online, Faces Of Freedom had a reach of 25 million, in print media around 8 million.