Silent Speech
UNICEF x KBS
Here's one way to take ignorance to school:
With a little help from KBS [+ PCI + Greg Hardes], UNICEF -- known for their mission to protect and defend the rights of every child -- decided to take some folks to school with their timely stunt in the streets of NYC during a time that hundreds of political leaders from around the world gathered at the United Nations for its General Assembly. Their message? That 27 million children around the world are currently not in school due to wars and conflict.
This is why I'm a fan:
Three things...
Timely
Disruptive
Educational
It's also purposeful. Okay, four things...
It's timing in terms of when the stunt was pulled, got the attention of bystanders yes, but the politicians who would be meeting at the exact same time -- the intended target of this stunt.
Timely stunts should disrupt. In fact, that's a prerequisite. And this one did just that as it disrupted for the sake of educating whilst pushing for change. That's called purposeful creativity.
The message of this campaign is a hard hitting truth. A practical, yet powerful one: "That depriving children of schooling today will only make it harder to build a better world tomorrow "by exacerbating cycles of ignorance, poverty, hate and violence". It's a timely stunt...timeless in messaging.
A message that even amidst the challenges of NYC traffic, increased police presence, and road closures due to the arrival of worldly leaders, was possible to execute thanks to the diligence of those behind it, leading the charge. It's how twenty-seven school buses managed to somehow get from Brooklyn to Times Square and by the UN's headquarters. A challenge that couldn't be avoided but was anticipated during the planning stages according to Patrick Scissons -- Chief Creative Officer at KBS. And thanks to Times Square, the message was amplified through donated ad space.
This team didn't stop here, though. They added the best and most touching piece. Each bus having one fact more attention grabbing than the next... you also get one attention grabber in the form of a person. When watching the campaign video, you can see one passenger in one of the buses -- "Syrian refugee Muzoon Almelllehan, whose family fled in 2013 to escape the civil war that has cost some 500,000 lives and displaced an estimated 13.5 million people over the past six years." Talk about storytelling...
This is the kind of stunt America should be pulling...
Sources: Adweek, KBS' Instagram Account