The TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris campaign for the Southern African Counter-Trafficking Assistance Programme (SACTAP) was awarded a Gold Lion at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. The award, for environmental design, was presented for the campaign entitled “A campaign designed to drop sales’.
The campaign consisted of a series of tunnels with false walls stationed in high pedestrian areas which visually illustrate the effect of real people suddenly disappearing as they walk along the walkway and through the tunnel.
Damon Stapleton, Executive Creative Director of TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris, part of TBWA\South Africa, says “This award is particularly meaningfully to TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris as it aimed to highlight the prevalence of human trafficking and present the recruitment, trade and abuse of our society’s most vulnerable. We realised that human-trafficking relies on the fact that potential victims are uninformed. So we needed to talk to the community directly, the way human traffickers do. We targeted children near schools or just walking the streets of poverty stricken townships and dense urban slums where unemployment and forced prostitution are common. By forcing people to imagine the unimaginable, the potential victims actually became the message.’
The agency also won two Silver Lions for campaigns in Outdoor (Client: Endangered Wildlife Trust & Client: International Organisation for Migration) and two Bronze Lions in Radio (Netsurit).
