Sometimes we don’t realise the value of things until they’re taken from us.

So to remind everyone how precious D&AD Pencils were we set out to steal them from agencies, production houses and design studios all over the world.

The aim was to make those who had won a Pencil feel the pain of losing their prized possession. We wanted them to make them angry enough to broadcast their frustration to the industry. Then we’d use their reactions to create a campaign that illustrated just how valuable D&AD Pencils were.

We took the Pencils in mid January, just as agencies were starting to think about which awards to enter in the year ahead.

As the outraged tweets and posts began, we added to the conspiracy theories with posts and re-tweets from a few high profile ‘Plants’ who we’d let in on the secret.

And we fed the reactions to our media contacts, ensuring that publications from around the world picked up on the story.

Once the Pencils were safely returned, we created ads featuring the quotes we had generated. These ran in industry titles and websites, and were pushed out through D&ADs own channels.

Finally, we wrapped things up with a summary video that revealed how we’d pulled off the entire process, creating another burst of conversation as the industry admired our underhanded genius.

The heist generated press coverage in everything from the Seattle Bulletin to New Zealand’s Campaign Brief.

Industry leaders, agencies and publications all tweeted and posted about the theft. Big names included RGA (122K followers), Africa (75K), Saatchi and Saatchi (64K), Dave Trott (22K), AdWeek (483K), Brand Republic (267K), Adland (159K) and the Drum (153K).

The combined reach of all the industry agencies, leaders and publications who tweeted about the missing pencils was 1.79 million. And the resultant PR coverage delivered a reach of over 14 million during the campaign period.

Two months later the final deadline for entries has just passed. The total is up 5% on 2015.