Jamal Khashoggi was a Washington Post journalist and one of the few public critics of the regime of Saudi ruler Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In 2018, Khashoggi was lured into the Saudi consulate – then brutally killed and cut in pieces. His body was never found.

All that remains is a secret voice recording, a transcript of the words spoken by the Saudi hit squad. The scandal takes the media by storm, but quietly disappears from headline news again. An attempted cover-up at international level.

Working together with Reporters Without Borders, we had to find a new, unconventional way to uncover the truth without ending up on the regime's radar.

We aimed at a wider target audience in the surrounding of the international embassies. We wanted to bring this scandal into the news again and give other still imprisoned journalists in Saudi Arabia a voice back.

We turned the secret transcript into Trojan posters. We transformed the quotes from Jamal Khashoggi's killers into headlines that would grab the attention of a wider audience, combined with a promise: "true-tune.com - the true sound experience from Saudi Arabia in true hi-res."

Appealing, eye-catching headlines combined with an attractive product promise took passersby on a journey to discover the truth via QR code. In the campaign video on our landing page, the quotes were unexpectedly put into context and the truth was made public.

In this way, we hijacked the (political) censorship and got the scandal back on the agenda.

The Trojan posters were developed for the 4th anniversary of Khashoggi's death. At the same time, images of the repressive ruler and murderer Mohammed Bin Salman and Western government leaders appeared with increasing frequency in the media, testifying to their ever-growing relations.

The anniversary of the death and political developments provided the perfect link to our idea and ensured that the press picked up our campaign all the more eagerly.

To gain media attention and a wider audience in the first place, we placed our posters as guerrilla print and geofencing ads amidst large international embassies. The posters then led to the campaign video on our landing page, where the truth was made public. A truth that, packaged in this surprising twist, finally made it into the media and gave Jamal Khashoggi and other journalists still imprisoned in Saudi Arabia their voice back.

The Trojan posters were developed for the 4th anniversary of Khashoggi's death. At the same time, images of the repressive ruler and murderer Mohammed Bin Salman and Western government leaders appeared with increasing frequency in the media, testifying to their ever-growing relations. The anniversary of the death and political developments provided the perfect link to our idea and ensured that the press picked up our campaign all the more eagerly.

To gain media attention and a wider audience in the first place, we placed our posters as guerrilla print and geofencing ads amidst large international embassies.

Eye-catching headlines and an attractive product promise on our guerrilla print and geofencing ads got passersby to stop. With a strong CTA and via QR code the ads took users and passersby on an unexpected journey to discover the truth about a political scandal in the campaign video.

The positive headlines and poppy, modern images changed to a documentary style with illustrations and collages that put the words in context and presented Khashoggi's story and the political scandal behind it in a vivid, exciting, yet serious and eye-opening way.

What looked like a lifestyle product offering transformed into content that hijacked (political) censorship in the right political environment and in reel-time.

In this way, we brought the scandal around the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and all the other journalists still imprisoned in Saudi Arabia back on the agenda as newspapers and media stations were covering it again.

The political scandal around the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and all the other journalists still imprisoned in Saudi Arabia went back on the (political) agenda.

The truth was heard by over 2,500,000 million people.

We got over 400,000 impressions in the first few hours and Increased the awareness by over 3,000%.