Treated as nothing more than property, slaves were stripped of everything. Even their names were taken from them, and thousands were arbitrarily re-named after the month in which they arrived at the Cape.

This insight led to the creation of The Slave Calendar, a physical calendar featuring the stark portraiture and true stories of hope as told by the living descendants of these slaves whose families still carry calendar month surnames to this day.

The Slave Calendar holds the stark portraiture and true stories of hope as told by the living descendants of those slaves who were torn from their homes.

With no media budget, we needed a scale and visual treatment that would leave no one untouched, meaning that the honest and powerful portraits needed to be the focus. The one asset we did have was time – as each month rolled out, the campaign grew greater attention, snowballing from local web coverage into front page news, radio debate, international coverage and national news station pieces.

Our direct mail strategy paid off as prominent South Africans, including Nobel Laurette, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, publicly endorsed the Slave Calendar, resulting in an audience in the tens of millions from just over 100 calendars produced.

For maximum impact with no media budget, our strategy was to hand-deliver and courier the oversized, A1 Slave Calendar directly to fifty of South Africa’s most prominent and influential citizens, and to direct PR contacts within local and international press and media. This list included politically active leaders connected to the apartheid struggle, for example Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, and the Iziko Slave Lodge museum’s catalogue of donors, supporters and stakeholders.

The Slave Calendar became front page local and international news, reaching an audience of over 33.7 million people with ZERO media budget. It received the official backing of Nobel Laurette, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, and has now become an on-going exhibit at the Iziko Slave Lodge Museum, one of eleven national museums.

The Slave Calendar was debated on the national news and on local and international talk radio stations, and was reprinted as a series of street pole posters by Cape Town’s leading newspaper.

Most importantly, though, just over 100 calendars increased visitor numbers to the museum by 26%, bringing back to life the stories of those slaves who were stripped of everything – even their names.