The ads making Colombian guerrillas lonely this Christmas
The Colombian Ministry of Defence plans to launch a
new propaganda campaign in the coming days designed to encourage
guerrillas from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc, to demobilise.
This week Farc announced a one-month unilateral ceasefire
for the five-decades long drug-fuelled conflict that has killed almost a
quarter of a million people. To draw rebels out of the jungle and into
the towns, the defence ministry will host a holiday festival in San
Vicente del Caguán, a former Farc headquarters.
On the path out of the jungle, guerrilla forces will see posters with
baby pictures that the Colombian ad agency Lowe SSP3 collected from
some of their mothers. “Antes de ser guerrillero, eres mi hijo,” the
posters read. The translation: Before being a guerrilla, you are my son.
When the soldiers reach the town and flick on the
television, they are likely to see a commercial with the same tagline
featuring the mothers of four soldiers looking through photographs and praying. “I want you next to me, not just your photo next to me,” a woman sings. A radio spot is also planned.
The marketing effort is the fourth in a series of campaigns from Interpublic’s Lowe SSP3 since
the Colombian government turned to the agency – whose clients include
Unilever and Red Bull – to complement its military, political and legal
efforts.
“It was a challenge we needed to accept because it is something that
we need to do for our country,” says Jose Miguel Sokoloff, chief
creative officer of the agency, whose teams have been
threatened by Farc. They will travel into the jungle to execute the
campaigns in Blackhawk helicopters and Kevlar vests, with army and navy
protection. “A peaceful solution to our conflict is a lot better than a
bloodier one,” he adds. “This gives us a chance to affect the outcome of
the conflict doing what we do, which is to communicate.”
Lowe
SSP3 began by talking to demobilised guerrillas, learning that the
“guerrilla is as much a prisoner of the organisation as even the people
he holds hostage,” Mr Sokoloff says. The agency noticed that the number
of people who demobilised peaked during Christmas because they missed
their home and their families.
Based on that insight, the first holiday-themed campaign, called “Operation Christmas”,
launched in 2012. Working with professional anti-guerrilla forces, the
agency selected 10 strategically located giant trees in the depths of
the jungle and covered them with 2,000 Christmas lights that lit up when
people walked past, along with a sign that read: “If Christmas can come
to the jungle, you can come home. Demobilise at Christmas. Anything is
possible.”
The next year, Lowe SSP3 launched its “Rivers of Light”
campaign. Knowing that rivers are heavily used by the guerrilla forces,
the agency sent out floating, illuminated plastic spheres that
contained messages from people all around the country asking them to
demobilise and reunite with their families.
While the award-winning campaigns have been credited with helping
encourage thousands of guerrillas to return to society, advertising has
not been the only tactic driving the demobilisation. Some young
guerrillas fall into the fighting by accident and are more susceptible
to marketing, but others have been brainwashed or are motivated by a
sense of economic injustice and marginalisation.
Mr Sokoloff says the work reminds him how constructive advertising
can be. “People ask me all the time, what do you think about selling
toothpaste after this?” he says. “Our profession is about changing
something, be it that you change the perception of a brand or be it that
you change some behaviour.”
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