Every year 100’s of km’s of Johannesburg’s roads are shut down for the world's second largest cycle race. This is seen as a major inconvenience for citizens as the road closures significantly impede their freedom of movement.

The Apartheid Museum saw this as an opportunity to remind citizens of one of the more heinous aspects of Apartheid – the Dompas.

On behalf of our client, we identified Twitter users who were angered enough to tweet their complaint about the inconvenience of the road closures. Using information from their Twitter profiles,we created a personal digital Dompas.

The Apartheid Museum effectively drew a parallel between their restricted movement and the unjust effects of the Apartheid Pass Laws. However annoyed the Twitter users felt on race day, pales in comparison to the reality of living as a black South African during the Apartheid era, with no freedom to move about as they pleased.

On the day of the race, we followed the cycle race's hashtag to mine tweets of ordinary citizens who expressed their frustration at the inconvenience of them not being able to move freely. We took their name and profile picture and created a Digital Dompas for them which we tweeted back to them in real-time. The Digital Dompas also functioned as a free pass to visit the Apartheid Museum.

By leveraging the hashtag of the 2nd biggest cycle race in the world, we were able to make the Apartheid Museum visible to thousands of South Africans.

The Apartheid Museum Digital Dompas tactical campaign was covered by some of South Africa’s leading newpapers, blogs and radio stations. In print the campaign was viewed by over 250 000 people, with a PR media value of over R250 000, on zero investment from the non-profit museum. Footfall into the museum spiked directly after the campaign.