We wanted to reach traditional newspaper readers, as they value independent journalism, but might not realize how dangerous a journalist’s life can be in some countries. Since we had true stories to tell, we had to find a way to reach newspapers readers and tell them true stories. That’s when we came up with the idea of merging the forces of 2 worlds: the stopping power of a powerful image in a press ad, combined with the unique opportunities of mobile/ digital communication. This didn’t only enable us to tell the true stories of the journalists in a compelling way. It also gave us the chance to redirect people to our website, where they could learn more about our activities. And where they could support us by ordering the book “100 pictures for press freedom”.

Our campaign flew all over the world, reaching people far beyond Belgium. We thought it was most interesting to see how people from Iran and Lybia, who found a clear symbol for their own battle in our campaign, spread the ad massively. It was largely shared on social networks and made people speak about the matter of ‘press freedom’, one of our main aims.

The first results also show a peak in the sales of the RSF book (donations 25% up), as well as a big progress in the number of Twitter/ Facebook followers. Since we launched this campaign after the death of the 2 photographers in April, it is too early to quantify the exact impact of the campaign, but it looks like it will be huge.