JOHANNESBURG The Trillion Dollar campaign run by The Zimbabwean and South Africas top advertising agency, TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris, is set to go down as one of the most successful advertising partnerships ever.The campaign was launched last year, with the primary aim of raising awareness for the plight of The Zimbabwean, which was then subject to outrageous luxury import duties of 70 per cent by the government of President Robert Mugabe. The Zanu (PF) regime, which has over the past decade forced the closure of four privately-owned newspapers, including the countrys biggest selling daily paper, the Daily News, presided over tough media laws that gave state security agents a leeway to arrest, detain and torture media practitioners working for the independent press.
Draconian statutes like the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) and the Public Order and Security Act (POSA), which have so far continued to be used despite the formation of a national unity government, have been the rope by which the media has been strangled. Due to the insecurity of independent media workers, most of whom have fled the country, The Zimbabwean remains printed outside the country in the UK and South Africa. This resulted in the then-Zanu (PF) government declaring it a foreign paper carrying luxury news and slapping it with the exorbitant duty. Out of that need to free the flow of information to ordinary Zimbabweans, the award-winning advertising tool, the Trillion Dollar campaign, was born.
Cannes awards
On June 23, at the 2009 International Advertising Festival, the campaign scooped seven Cannes awards to become the single most awarded campaign coming out of South Africa in Cannes’ 56-year history. It won two Bronze Lions, two Gold Media Lions for the best use of mixed media, one Gold Outdoor Lion for the best outdoor and a Grand Prix, at an awards ceremony held on the night of Tuesday June 23, 2009. The campaign also bagged the Silver Direct Lion awarded at the opening awards ceremony.
This week, the campaign is set to win even more awards, as it has been nominated for the 31st Loeries Annual Awards a record eight times. The final announcement of the results is expected to be made in Cape Town today, at the Loeries Festival Weekend. If it wins in all the categories that it has been nominated for, the campaign will have set a record that will be very hard to surpass 15 awards in total for a single campaign. Judging by the June outcome, scooping the eight awards seems to be a realistic feat.
The four categories
The campaign features in four different categories namely advertising, design, experiential and integrated. Under advertising, the campaign is fighting for the sub-categories of Outdoor and Ambient – Outdoor Media for the Trillion Dollar Billboard, Outdoor and Ambient Posters for each of the Z$250 000 000, Cheaper Than Money, Fight The Regime. It is also vying for the Outdoor and Ambient – Ambient Media for the Trillion Dollar Wallpaper and Advertising Mixed Mixed-Media campaign for the overall Trillion Dollar campaign itself.
In design, the campaign is in line for a prize under the sub-category Brand Identity and Collateral Design – Direct and Promotional Mail for the Trillion Dollar Mailer, while in experiential, it was nominated for Alternative Media and Field Marketing for the Trillion Dollar flyer. The last nomination under integrated is under the sub-category, Through the line communication for the Trillion Dollar campaign as a whole. In getting the nominations, the campaign prevailed in a long list of 3 000 entries received in 2009.
Success: duty waived
The major achievement of the campaign was that the finance Minister, Tendai Biti, waived the duty fee. The Trillion Dollar campaign consisted of various creative elements, including a billboard, made up entirely of Zimbabwean dollar bank notes. This was meant to be an analogy for the collapse of the country. The idea developed into using actual notes as the medium of the campaign, since the money had no value in terms of purchasing power.
This represented the collapsed state of Zimbabwean currency, which had failed to cope with world record inflation. While the records have been broken and the duty removed, The Zimbabwean can now focus on the ultimate task ahead that of trying to Fight the regime that has crippled a country, as one of the billboards in the Trillion Dollar campaign said.
Post published in: News