The biggest challenge for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa is human trafficking: the buying and selling of human beings for forced labour and prostitution. It’s a trade that relies on deceiving those trying to escape poverty - a lie that works up to 4 million times a year. But this deception can no longer work if people are informed. Our brief was to do exactly that, inform the vulnerable and give them a toll-free helpline setup by our client, The Southern African Counter Trafficking Assistance Programme.

To create something that would literally make men, women and children disappear off the streets, right before people’s eyes, in their neighbourhoods, on their streets, on their very own doorsteps and to promote the SACTAP toll-free helpline.

By creating these 'disappearing acts' we were not only able to engage with people in poverty stricken areas without access to main stream information channels, but we were also able to inform them about the realities of human trafficking, making them impervious to the deception and lies used by traffickers. We also provided a toll-free helpline number directly linked to our client. We made the unimaginable, imaginable. We turned the vulnerable into the message.

To achieve this disappearing act, we needed to think like the criminals, and like them we decided to use deception. We created tunnels with false walls, which precisely matched the real walls behind them, so that when people walked through, they disappeared, leaving onlookers wondering what had happened. Thereafter, we would inform them with our message and a toll-free helpline number