So let’s face it. When you think of advertising, you usually think of highly egotistical, Mad Men-style executives, or a bunch of overconfident hipsters sitting around their offices thinking of ways to push products on people. And yes, some of that is true. But in Colombia, advertising’s being used to save a country and its people.
It’s the power of changing minds that’s being used to try and put an end to a 50+ year war that’s killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions of others. Yes, advertising is being used to help stop a revolutionary army hell-bent on overthrowing the government.
“This gives us the ohance to apply our skills to something that is fundamentally important to us, to our kids, to our country. We created campaigns and TV commercials that were all build to convince guerillas to surrender and, as important, to help the Colombian people accept them back,” Jose Miguel Sokoloff, Co-Chairman and Chief Creative Officers at MullenLowe SSP3 said in a statement.
Here are several campaign videos that show the amazing work that Sokoloff and his team are doing – and talk about results that truly count:
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Over eight years, 18,000 guerilla fighters have put down their weapons and came home.
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Negotiations between the fighters and Colombian government have started
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The overall energy and spirit in Colombia is back again. Per Sokoloff, “If you had been there 10 years ago and you go today, you would say, this is a completely different planet.”
This quote really sums it up nicely:
“You have to find a truth in what you’re saying,” Sokoloff says. “And when you get there, when you find something, that’s something that you can actually hold onto and you can actually communicate, that’s the salvation.”
Pretty cool, right? Let us know if you have anything awesome you’d share with our team!
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