More than a year ago I wrote about a great guerrilla marketing experiment directed by Sweden based Studio Total, aimed at rising public awareness about the lack of freedom of speech in Belarus (for the lazy ones, the whole article at the bottom of this post).
I have just received the following email from Tomas Mazetti, Studio Total creative director:
What could two poor, uneducated drifters do in the world of advertising? We decided to find out. Five years, we gave our little experiment.
It became, by far, the best five years of our lives. We made money, we won awards. We met Rockstars, Prime Ministers and Prime Ministers yet to be. We drove really fast boats into really hard rocks and flew aeroplanes at lower altitudes than most. We got hunted by the KGB. We got bona fide groupies. We made fools of ourselves in ways we couldn’t have imagined before Studio Total. Example: live on CNN in front of eighty million people.
And yes. We burned money but we always seemed to earn even more (some investements payed off…). We annoyed the many and got loved by the very, very few. (Well, STATISTICALLY someone ought to have loved us, no?) We learned a lot, and forgot even more.
Now our time is up. Did we accomplish anything? That’s a tricky question. “”אֵין כָּל חָדָשׁתַּחַת הַשָּׁמֶשׁ” as God probably would have said. But no-one, NO-ONE, can say we didn’t try.
If you want to write anything on our grave do it here. (Obviously, I did it -Silvia)Hasta Siempre.
/Studio TotalPS: If nothing else, our little experiment proved you don’t need an education to win Marketing Awards.
And I would add, this experiment proved that “imagination and creativity are more important and powerful than knowledge”. Studio Total, R.I.P
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Teddy Bears and freedom of speech in Belarus
Yesterday I was reading all the emails I received during the last month- I was on holiday with little time for checking emails and updating my blog.
I stumbled upon the Free Speech in Belarus Teddy Bear bombing campaign by Studio Total, a Swedish PR agency. I was reading the story when my daughter Matilde came to my desk, watched the picture and said: “How cute! What is written there?” pointing her puffy finger at the sign held by the bear.
I then found another picture, where the sign appears written in English (and frankly speaking it seems to me that it is photoshopped, therefore I do not know whether that is the correct translation, but I hope it is), I translated into Italian for her, adding a little bit of extra-meaning for her to understand the whole situation.
“Do you think that the bad people there collected all the bears and destroyed them or they gave them to the children in that city? I would have loved to have one!”
That was a very good question I was not able to give an answer to, but I am going to ask to Studio Total what happened next.
Matilde’s quesiton made me smile, but that also made me wondered how sometimes we forget that in many countries freedom is NOT a right, is not a natural thing that you do not even debate or, as Matilde added: “At school too I am not allowed to speak whenever I want. But if I ask for permission by raising my hand, the teacher allows me to speak. Maybe they just have to raise their hands”.
