Calls for change have swept North Africa. Further south, in Zimbabwe, the continent’s most brutal dictatorship arrests people for simply speaking about what’s happening in Libya. Our client is a newspaper called The Zimbabwean. For speaking-out against this regime, its vehicles are burned, and its vendors are beaten. This newspaper could not rely on street sales in Zimbabwe. They needed to target over a million Zimbabweans who have fled to South Africa and abroad.In a global news environment noisier than any in history, we had to sell subscriptions to a newspaper Robert Mugabe was desperate to silence. We contacted every photojournalist who had managed to work in Zimbabwe over the past year for images of the reality on the ground. We positioned the iconic map of Zimbabwe to appear as an empty speech bubble at the corner of the subject’s mouth, illustrating that these people were voiceless.

In our first two months, The Voiceless Campaign has increased hits to The Zimbabwean website by 287%. The Zimbabwean’s subscription base is growing by 10% weekly. Over half these subscriptions are bought for people inside Zimbabwe.

We used the silence the regime imposed, to talk to the world.

The map of Zimbabwe was positioned onto genuine photojournalism, appearing as an empty speech bubble, imploring viewers to act. Billboards, print and P.O.S posters directed consumers to a website where they could read, hear and locate the incidents. They could also disseminate them via social media and add their voices to the blog.

Poverty, lack of internet access and oppression were bypassed for poorer Zimbabweans by a brand new medium: 'VoiceBoxes' – simple telephonic devices we designed and erected in safe houses for people to comment orally to desks in South Africa, where operators transcribed their comments, including them on blogs. Subscriptions on the website could be purchased personally, or on behalf of people inside Zimbabwe. No media owners in Zimbabwe would run the campaign, so we included decals in copies of the paper. When people saw the print advertisements, they knew exactly how to use decals to make their own.