Social Campaigns

1. What’s wrong with the picture? Creative team consisted of Anna Duensing, Ievgeniia Blazhevska, Melanie Hudler, and Kamil Mamak worked on the LGBTQ campaign.

Group's report and Key Visual 

The second part of our fellowship in Poland consisted of working in international teams on social campaigns dealing with different burning issues in contemporary Polish society. On the day we were assigned our topics, six motley groups of fellows were formed to create the campaigns. Our group, consisting of one Pole, one German, one American, and one Ukrainian, was quite content to get the subject of human trafficking, which is a problem in Poland, a country that serves as an origin, transit and destination country for human trafficking victims. After some discussion, we decided to focus on Polish people who are being trafficked to Western European countries and forced to work in agriculture and construction. Human traffickers lure these people through false job advertisements promising good working conditions and substantial payment, when in reality they are forced to work in slave-like conditions for next to nothing.

After some research and debate, with much help from Joanna Garnier, a visiting representative from the organization La Strada, we managed to come up with a detailed report, a document called the “Creative Brief” in advertising jargon. We designated our target group as young Polish citizens (18-26) who are looking for seasonal jobs abroad. In terms of an image to use (the “Key Visual”), we settled on the idea of a “fake” job advertisement similar to those appearing in Polish newspapers or online. Instead of praising a good seasonal job abroad, however, we wanted to display the facts: Bad housing conditions, very low wages (if at all), potential physical and sexual abuse, very little free time, no possibilities to call home or go home for the weekend or holidays, etc. After having developed these ideas in productive discussion rounds, we had to switch topics. We were now assigned to create a social campaign that promotes civil partnerships for same-sex couples. Having felt well-prepared and safe to work with the human trafficking topic, we suddenly had to rethink completely trying to come to grips with this challenging new subject.

Civil Partnerships are an issue of hot debate, with a bill currently being mulled over in Polish Parliament. This indecision is reflected in approval statistics amongst the Polish population. In particular, forty-five percent of Polish people are definitely against registered partnerships, with twenty percent inclined to be against. Nine percent approve of partnerships and sixteen percent are inclined to approve. Ten percent of the population has no opinion. Notably (though unsurprisingly), forty percent of inhabitants of the biggest cities in Poland are in favor of registered civil partnerships. With this new campaign, our goal was to focus on the ten percent of ambivalent people, estimating them to be young heterosexual couples age twenty-five to thirty-five who live in Poland’s biggest cities. We wanted them to realize that same-sex couples deserve the same basic rights as heterosexual couples.

It is important to note what some of these rights are—what, exactly, civil partnerships establish and allow. Ultimately, they allow for basic and relatively simple rights like joint-taxes, inheritance, hospital visitations, and burial procedures. This idea kicked off some of our initial brainstorming. We thought, “The rights that these individuals demand are essentially rights to some of the most bureaucratic and unpleasant tasks that typical citizens face. It is kind of funny that there are people demanding them with such vigor. Perhaps that could be the start of some kind of campaign?” In this line of thinking, we were also quite moved by what the visiting lecturer Ewa Tomaszewicz imparted on us, the idea that marginalized groups shouldn’t ask for their rights, but rather, they should demand.

We also thought about playing with the idea of Poland’s relationship to a seemingly more progressive Western Europe and the memory of the Cold War. We had some initial ideas for visuals that included an iron curtain separating same-sex couples from images of normal domestic life, but ultimately concluded that images of the iron curtain and the Berlin wall are not as striking and relevant for Polish people as one might think. A final idea we had involved the image of a wedding cake and the slogan, “Let Them Eat Cake,” suggesting that individuals should focus on the cake, the love, the unity, the shared experiences, rather than the genders of those being united. From there, we worked with Marek Dorobisz, Creative Director at Next/Starcom MediaVest, to reach our final campaign. He felt that something like, “Let Them Eat Cake,” trivialized the situation too much, but he really liked the idea of using typical images from marriages and weddings. Our target group, this ambivalent percentage, likely do not know much about civil partnerships, nor do they likely care. However, if we frame the subject within the idea of love and marriage, they can relate and understand the basic message—yes, there are the technical and legal aspects of marriage and civil partnerships, but ultimately it is about love and a formalized connection to one’s partner. Using the image of a wedding cake with two grooms on top, we decided on the slogan, “What’s wrong with the picture,” or “Something’s not right” (“Coś tu nie gra!”). Our target group may look at this image and think, “Hmm – two men?”, but then their eyes will be directed toward smaller text that points out some obvious mistake in the picture, something like, “This frosting should be blue.” The poster is a kind of mind game and the idea allows for lots of variations—online games, short videos, public events, and of course, other posters with different images all riffing on the same theme.

 

Overall, despite initial struggles with the brief switch, we had an incredibly interesting time with the new topic. Each one of our national perspectives brought something very different to the table. Anna, the American fellow, for instance, currently lives in New York, a state that is very progressive in terms of LGBTQ rights, having recently passed a bill allowing same-sex marriage. Melanie, coming from Germany, felt that it was very important to deal with LGBTQ rights in Poland because, compared to her home country, Poland still has a very long way to go. Kamil, our Polish fellow, noted that he has witnessed considerable progress during his own lifetime, but knows there is a lot more work to do. It is important to note that our final group member, Ievgeniia, comes from Ukraine, a country that is arguably further behind Poland in terms of the debate over LGBTQ rights. All in all, we were amazed by how quickly creative ideas come when working so intensely and with such different perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences. We were also, of course, grateful for all the work and input provided by Marek and his team, as well as our fellow fellows. Draper would be proud. 

 
2. No diversity...no kebab! Creative team consisted of Andrew Dusek, Simratpal Kaur, Natalia Kotwica, and Milena Opper focused on the Racism and Xenophobia campaign.

Group's report and Key Visual 

The time had come to put the “action” into Humanity in Action. The second, output phase of the Polish HIA program focuses on constructing social campaigns to address a variety of issues that impact human rights protection in the Polish context. After a semi-democratic selection process, our group—comprised of American, German and Polish fellows—was assigned the topic of LGBTQ rights in Poland. 

The task initially seemed daunting, since Poland is commonly cited as one of the most difficult countries for people to be openly gay or lesbian. However, as we learned, to say that Poland is blatantly homophobic is not entirely accurate. Most people in Poland do not care about LGBTQ rights because they do not know any gay or lesbian people personally. Therefore, we decided that to combat antipathy towards the Polish LGBTQ community, we would have to target the next generation. We focused our fledgling campaign on young males in small towns and cities with the objective of making them more likely to accept peers who come out. 

Like the cast of the television show Mad Men, we began brainstorming and crafted what we thought was a workable brief. But after a meeting with our judges (Monika Mazur-Rafał, director of HIA Poland, Magda Szarota, communication director of HIA Poland, and Marek Dorobisz, creative director of the advertising agency Next), we were sent back to the drawing board. We had to narrow our focus, identify a clear target audience, phrase our problem in human rights terms, get edgier, and move towards concrete action. Reaching out to children, especially concerning the difficult subject matter, proved to be a challenge. What age should we target? What lingo should we use? What do we expect them to do? These questions were difficult to answer. We decided to target 13- to 19-year old males in small towns and medium-sized cities who engage in homophobic bullying by making the issue personal. We decided to be bold and demand, not ask bullies to stop harassing gay youth. 

After we had revised our brief to accommodate the comments we received, we were instructed to switch briefs with another group and develop their idea to fruition. Our task was now to tackle racism and xenophobia among 13- to 16-year-old Polish youth in large, urban centers. Although we had to switch gears with little time to gain our bearings, we set about implementing the previous group’s ideas while adding our own, unique spin. 

Young people in Poland may be afraid of, or unfamiliar with foreigners because they have had limited or no interaction with them. Our task was to help students form positive views of people from different racial, ethnic and national backgrounds, and help young people become open to forming relationships with minorities. Identifying an image that would recognizably signify diversity to teenage boys, while still being hip and cool, was difficult. It was important that the approach was relatable without being too juvenile. We avoided whimisical, child-like imagery with bright colors in favor of a more hip and humorous way of gaining entre with Polish youth. 

In order to make youth consider how many aspects of their daily lives are affected by foreign influences, we sought to highlight how one, prominent aspect of Polish culture was actually not native to Poland. To make fast food-loving Polish youth question what life would be like without kebab, a dish that can trace its origins to Turkey, we took an absurdist approach to a hypothetical situation. By replacing traditional lamb or chicken kebab filler with something as inane as cabbage, we wanted to make young people question what life would be like without the foreign influences that literally add spice to their lives. The result essentially highlights the absurdity of xenophobia, as many of the things Polish youth (and Poles in general) love have foreign origins. If the campaign were to be implemented, it could be easily expanded to other foreign products like Vietnamese food, for instance. 

That being the creative process, our final poster honestly did not satisfy us. We felt that it was ambiguous and could have been a travel poster. The cartoon minarets in the background were intended to show that it was a kebab store window, but in reality, they made kebabs, and the Middle East, seem even more foreign and preposterous. While the final poster was not precisely what we were expecting, it taught us a lot about the nuances of the creative process. Original ideas or intentions are often lost in translation; they take on a new shape with every new person who contributes to a project. A significant part of creativity is being ready for the unexpected, and knowing that you cannot always have complete control over the final product. We still wholeheartedly love our campaign, and think it is a catchy and humorous way to quickly remind people of the absurdity of xenophobia.

 3. Check your job conditions abroad... before it’s too late! Creative team comprised of Paulina Kasprowicz, Nadiya Popadyuk, and Allen Sanchez worked on the Human Trafficking campaign.

Group's report and Key Visual 

Initially, our predetermined group of one Ukrainian, one Pole, and one American was tasked with creating a social campaign concept called brief concerning the broad topic of racism and xenophobia in Poland. Fortunately, we had already completed a half-day “Advertising 101” training session with Marek Dorobisz, creative director at Next ad agency. He had given us the tools and training to create a perfect brief, and we were ready to create our own...or so we thought. Though we had already spent a few hours practicing writing a brief and receiving constructive criticism, it was still difficult for our group to narrow down the very encompassing topic of racism in Poland. Who would we target? What would our main message be? And why people should believe this campaign was needed?

After some deliberation, we settled on the target group being 13-16 year old Polish youth. We had done some research that indicated that diversity education in Poland was incomprehensive, and that many Polish youth had little to no exposure to people of different ethnic or national backgrounds. We had also read portions of reports that indicated that students had committed acts of violence against other students of different ethnic or national backgrounds or of mixed heritage. We thought it would be a good idea to project positive images of diversity onto the growing minds of Polish youth before they were able to form negative perceptions of people from different backgrounds. To us, our brief was coming together and making sense: we’d target youth with a message of “be BOLD and embrace diversity”, nicely packaged in a “colorful, bold, and playful, yet educational” campaign.

However, when we presented our first draft ideas to Marek, we quickly realized how much more focused our campaign needed to be. Though Marek encouraged us by saying we were on the right track, too much of our brief was full of “unicorn rainbow messages”, as he so eloquently put it. If we were going to have a winning brief on which to create an appealing and effective campaign, we’d need a clearer direction. So back to the drawing board we went. 

We kept our main ideas but focused our target group and message; we wanted to reach, more specifically, 13-16 year old Polish students from middle- to lower-middle class urban areas who have had little or no exposure to people of diverse backgrounds. And instead of sending the main message of “embracing diversity”, we now wanted to communicate “open up to diversity”. We figured that since Poland is not yet a diverse country, there is not much diversity to “embrace”, instead, we thought that students should be ready for diversity as it does come to Poland. Though it was difficult to reach consensus in our group and what our message should be, and how we should sell it, we felt that we had produced a strong brief. We even had ideas for visual and multimedia materials to use in the campaign. However, it would not be up to us to bring this campaign to fruition. 

Just as we were getting comfortable with our brief, and excited to move on to the creative process, we found out that our brain-child would be transferred to another group, and we, in turn, would receive an entirely different campaign to get creative with. Though this was unexpected for our group, we took the change in stride, and transitioned from writing a brief on race to thinking creatively about human trafficking. The final product of our HIA fellowship would no longer be a diversity campaign aimed at Polish youth, but a human trafficking awareness campaign aimed at 19-25 year olds seeking to take work abroad. 

The difficulty with human trafficking in Poland is that Poland is at once a sending, transit, and destination location for trafficking. This means that Poland is 1) a place from which people are sent abroad to work in slave-like conditions, 2) a place where people are smuggled into and then sent to other countries in the EU, and 3) a place that receives trafficked people from abroad to work in slave-like conditions here. A human trafficking campaign in Poland could be approach from a multitude of angles, but our brief asked us to focus on one clear target group: unemployed, undereducated, 19-25 year old Polish people who were eager and excited to make “easy money” by taking low-skilled work abroad in industries such as child-care, domestic work, construction, and agriculture. 

Oftentimes this group could be duped into taking false job offers abroad and ending up being victims of human trafficking. The way it works is quite simple: a young, unemployed desperate person starts looking for a job abroad, finds an excellent offer that pays well and provides other benefits, and then takes the job without doing much research on the person/”company” offering the job. The job seeker then usually quickly decides to take the offer, only to arrive in the host country and find that the offer was fake and the employer is really a human trafficker. The job seeker is then forced into illegal labor such as sex slavery, unpaid stoop work, factory work, or other manual or sex labor that is unpaid and against the employees will. Our campaign mission and message were to convince this target group that human trafficking could happen to them if they don’t do research into their job offers.

Initially, our group wanted to mimic and sensationalize a typical job offer - “2000 Euro/month! Free housing and airfare! Quick money!” - but have an embedded message along the lines of “you just got trafficked”. We played with this idea a little bit and thought of different layouts for the campaign. However, like before, when we took it to Marek for review, we realized we were not heading in the right direction. What this campaign needed was not “boring” written information, but a strong visual to capture our target audience’s attention. We needed to send the message: “check your job offer before you go abroad.”

For many victims of human trafficking, they take a job offer as one thing, such as a nanny, housekeeper, or construction worker, and end up enslaved in another “job”, such as a sex worker, factory worker, or unpaid stoop laborer. We played with the dichotomy of what people thought they were getting vs. the real job they got, and we moved in the direction of a split screen visual. One half would be an image of what the job seeker thought, contrasted with an image of the actual job they received on arrival. For the most visually appealing advert, we decided to play with the dichotomy of housekeeper and sex worker.

During our day with the creative team at Next, we finalized our key visual and solidified additional elements of the campaign. Our visual would take the original contrasting images of housekeeper and sex worker, and add the following message to each respective split: “Check your job conditions abroad... before it’s too late”. Our tagline would be: “Put an end to human trafficking”. If the key visual campaign were to be expanded, we would include other contrasting “job offers” with “reality”, such as construction offer vs. enslaved factory laborer. In addition to the key visual, we decided to have an online component as well as an interactive one. We played with the idea of a fake job posting that linked to a facebook page on the issue. Our interactive component is an Android/iOS “JobCheck” checklist application that helped people identify the legitimacy of their job offer abroad. Both of these elements strengthened the overall campaign by reaching the target group where they spend a lot of their time: online and on their devices. 

Throughout the whole project we experienced a range of emotions and situations. At times our group felt like we had no ideas left, that we were hopeless uncreative minds. Other times we had small breakthroughs, though. In the end, we are very happy with our final key visual and campaign. We feel that it speaks directly to our target group and effectively conveys the message stated in the brief. Though it’s only been about a week and a half of working on this social campaign, our group feels like we’ve experienced a broad spectrum of professional and creative challenges, and successes. We’ve also had the unique opportunity to collaborate with people from different cultures and nationalities - ourselves. In the end, we’ll probably never be able to look at another advertisement the same. So what?

4. The "Real Man" does not bully gay people. Creative team consisting of Raymundo Cardenas, Sarah Grunberg, and Maryna Rabinovych dealt with LGBTQ campaign.

Group's report and Key Visual

Our group was originally given the task of creating a concept for social campaign called brief based on the issue of human trafficking in Poland. Because we had not yet had any speakers who touched upon the issue of human trafficking, our group met in a bit of a panic, not knowing much about the topic at hand and how to even begin addressing it in the form of a social campaign. We had heard from Jacek Purski, from the Never Again Association, that the trafficking of African soccer players had recently become an issue in Poland, with clubs providing players with false contracts and then taking advantage of them in various ways, but we quickly realized that there was not yet enough information about this issue for us to create a solid brief for our social campaign. We still worked through this idea and because of the vast amount of demographics and issues related to human trafficking we decided it would be best to address the root of the problem—false contracts and advertisements, which converted normal labor into slave-like conditions of work in foreign countries. We agreed that our target audience should be those who would seek job opportunities abroad, specifically in the unskilled labor sector. 

After our talk from the La Strada organization, the only organization dealing with human trafficking in Poland, we solidified this idea. We struggled significantly with a main message as our campaign was created around the vision of a poster that we had in mind. Our main message was extremely pointed and appropriate for this one poster, but our feedback was always that we had to broaden the message in order for it to serve several campaigns. After some revisions, we finally created a brief that we were proud of. However, this feeling of accomplishment was short lived as we were informed via email soon after that our “new” briefs were attached. We had to start over – a new brief, a new issue, a new social campaign. 

Output Phase 

We were surprised to find out that our campaigns had been rearranged and that we now had to tackle the issue of homophobic bullying. Our first meeting was difficult because we had to work on an issue from a perspective that was not our own. We struggled to get a full understanding of a brief that was not our own and not a product of our own thought process. We were also concerned about target audience – young males between the ages of 13 and 19.  How do you convince 13 to 19 year old high school males to do anything? By the end of our first meeting we had come up with several ideas for the “To-Do” section of our campaign, which focused mostly on showing the senselessness of bullying itself. We tried to work out the root of this particular problem and thought that by showing bullies that they too could be the target of bullying, that this would somehow change their thought process.

We were not entirely confident with our ideas but we thought that they were definitely a step in the right direction. Our first feedback session with Marek Dorobisz, creative director at Next agency was rough. We sat and listened to another group present their strategy, one that Marek seemed to actually love, and then slowly sank in our chairs when it was our turn to present. Marek of course did not seem to like any of our strategies but worked with our ideas to help come up with something better and more effective.  He suggested the idea of bullies being bullied themselves, or better yet, bullying people for doing everyday things—kicking a soccer ball, eating a sandwich, going to the movies. By focusing on these absurd situations, the campaign would put an emphasis on the  “senselessness” of bullying. The slogan would have read something like “Bullying someone for kicking a soccer ball is as senseless as bullying someone for being gay”. However, in our meeting with Marek, we also came up with something very interesting: one commonality that our target audience had was this idea of being a “man”.  

In a follow-up meeting, our group developed a new idea—one that we were worried Marek would immediately shoot down, but also one that we thought had great potential. We decided to begin a campaign based on what “real men” do, or rather, what they do in contrast with what they do not. We toyed with different names and characters, and with some inspiration from Chuck Norris and The Most Interesting Man, we then came up with “The Real Man” or “Prawdziwy Facet” as our main symbol. The “Real Man” would be able to do almost anything, his talents and expertise would vary, but his underlying message would always remain the same: He does not bully gay people. 

The idea of the “Real Man” was only a secondary idea, but when we presented it to Marek, it became the life of our key visual. Our campaign then became about engaging our target audience in their expression of masculinity. We wanted to show our target audience that a real man could be confident, brave, cool and everything else positive imaginable, and that with this confidence, it would be unnecessary and very unlike a real man to bully people specifically for being gay. The “Real Man” campaign teaches that there is actually no need to target someone’s differences as a means of proving oneself in any regard. We expanded our idea on the key visual to the social media world by creating profiles for our fictional character through Facebook and Twitter. We thought that in this way, our campaign could have life past the singular poster which was created for us. The social mediums we used were also methods of making our campaign more lively, more interactive and therefore, more likely to resonate with our target audience.  Most importantly, these social networking sites gave us the ability to build our character and allow for others to really get to know “Real Man” or “Prawdziwy Facet” in Polish.

The overall process was definitely a learning experience. With an American, Ukrainian, and Polish perspective we were able to construct and agree upon many ideas, learning valuable lessons from each other along the way. We learned how important the brainstorming process itself was, and how sitting together and simply shouting out ideas that were good, bad, ridiculous, or even impossible, would eventually lead us to one good and effective idea. There were definitely up and downs, and moments when none of us had a clue how to tackle these huge issues, but together we were able to overcome and create a campaign that we truly believed in. 

5. One color alone never scores. Creative team comprised of Maira Kusch, Antoni Teodorczyk, and Yuliya Zemlytska worked on the Racism/Xenophobia campaign.

Group's report and Key Visual

In the beginning, we assumed that creating a poster on a given topic should be a feasible task when we learned about our excercise for the social campaigns in the beginning of the program. Quite to the contrary, developing a social campaign and coming up with a „big idea“ for the key visual then of course proved to be much harder than expected.

In the beginning of the training our group was assigned an LGBTQ issue. After a long period of brainstorming and weighing ideas we decided to focus on the promotion of registered partnerships for same-sex couples in Poland because this topic is currently an object of public debate. The main question is whether to legalize registered partnerships or not. In an attempt to get inside information on the subject we met with the informal Polish LGBTQ movement Miłość nie wyklucza in front of the Polish Sejm where they were just promoting the adoption of a same-sex partnership bill. This meeting provided us with a new perspective on the issue and the necessary knowledge to develop our own social campaign.

Our first task was the conception of a so-called creative brief – a paper summarizing the issue we want to address, our target group, the main message we would like to spread as well as our goal at the end of the campaign and possible ways to tackle the problem. Working on this brief was a new and really great experience for all of us since no one in our group had ever designed a social campaign before. After we finished the first draft of the brief, we had the opportunity to present it to Marek Dorobisz, creative director at the Next agency, Monika Mazur-Rafał, director of HIA Poland, and Magda Szarota, communication director  HIA Poland. The feedback from these professionals was extremely useful and helpful for improving the final version of the brief.

After that exercise our trainers decided to switch briefs between groups and all of a sudden we were assigned the topic of “Racist behavior among Polish soccer fans”. In the beginning this change of briefs created a little shock since our group put a lot of effort and creativity in our previous brief and we were very proud of what we had designed in the end. After a while we realized, though, that this change was a useful exercise to teach us how to be creative even when we are not really emotionally attached to the topic. Dealing with the new concept, however, was a true challenge because we had no idea where to start or which ideas could be effective to tackle the main problem stated in the brief. We were supposed to focus on racism against black football players in Polish stadiums. Racism is currently a problem in Polish football because some black players in Poland's First League are constantly confronted with racist behavior if they fail to help their team win. At the moment it is popular among some football fans to wear monkey masks, throw bananas on the football field and chant monkey sounds, implying that black football players are monkeys. Our target group were male football fans in Poland's First League, ages 18 to 25, who act in racist ways during the football games. After a time of reflection and a long period of brainstorming we concluded that the best approach to the topic was to focus on the soccer ball as an international symbol of football. For almost two centuries the soccer ball has always been both black and white. For us this ball impersonates cooperation and working together in a team, independent of nationality or ethnicity. The ball does not care whether it is kicked by a black, Asian or white player. 

Creating the key visual for the campaign proved to be really hard. Our initial idea of putting the faces of famous black and white football players on the white and black spots of a soccer ball was almost instantly rejected by Marek because this could imply kicking the faces of these players with your foot. After the dismissal of this concept our group had a very hard time developing new great ideas because the first idea was stuck in our heads and our target group just seemed very hard to reach by any kind of advertisement. During our last meeting with Marek and his team we decided to use the simple image of a white soccer ball on a green ground, suggesting that – since the ball has always been black and white - a soccer ball looks incomplete without the black spots as the teams seems incomplete without black football players. A true football fan should support ALL players of a team because only as a team the club can win. One color alone never scores.

Working together in an international team and coming up with a great idea that everybody could agree on within such a short amount of time was challenging, but at the same time very rewarding and helpful, because we did not get lost in our own cultural perspectives and developed ideas which we would have never thought of just by ourselves. The whole exercise of developing a social campaign, designing the brief and creating a key visual was a unique experience for all of us which could be very useful for our future professional lives.

 

6. Empowering the victims of human trafficking! Creative team comprised of Daniel Cho, Andrea Cristina Ruiz, and Olena Sholomei focused on the Human Trafficking campaign.

Group's report and Key Visual

Tackling the problem of human trafficking and the modern day slavery is complex and challenging, especially in Poland. Poland is uniquely affected by human trafficking because of its unique geopolitical position. Poland is a receiving, transfer, and exporting country and an estimated 15.000 victims are affected each year according to the latest reports. With a Polish youth unemployment rate of 24.7%, according to the OECD, many Poles are looking to opportunities abroad. Going abroad to countries such as Italy, Germany, and Sweden, amongst other is a common practice for young Poles that want to find opportunities for temporary work. The problem is not the fact that Poles are going abroad, the problem is that many of them are too eager to fall into traps that make them victims of human trafficking. There are several advertisements that offer large sums of money for little work and without much credibility. In many cases, the victims of trafficking think that they are lucky to have such a great opportunity and eagerly sign contracts without reviewing the conditions of the credibility of the company.

Our challenge was to develop a social campaign that would be valuable and effective at combating human trafficking. The group focused on a specific component of human trafficking in order to be specific and effective. The group wanted to address potential victims of human trafficking that lived in small towns in Poland and were considering work abroad. We addressed our campaign to youth between the ages of 18-26 who were looking to go abroad and were in the process of looking for opportunities. We felt that both males and females could become human trafficking victims and wanted to include this reality in our campaign design. 

Arriving to our key visual was a challenging and instructive process. One of the most rewarding elements was observing the creative process as one idea served as a springboard to the next. We brainstormed over 20 ideas and finally settled on one final theme. We began with the idea of a shopping window that displayed images of youth in our target group before and after they had been trafficked. When we were defining the way the shop window would look we decided to have our key visual represent one individual who had been trafficked. This individual would tell the audience about their experience and communicate our main message “Check your contract twice before you go abroad”.

We thought that we could uniquely conceptualize the issue of human trafficking by empowering the victims of human trafficking in our poster. Currently, many advertisements regarding the subject of human trafficking frequently do not give a voice to the victims of forced labor. For example, women on the face of forced prostitution campaigns are often and solely portrayed as disempowered, helpless individuals who are too battered and weak to stand up for themselves. Additionally, they are usually shackled in chains to a bedpost and are depicted within a dark backdrop wearing sullen expressions. So, when considering the tone we wanted to use for our poster, we wanted to avoid this form of negative social campaigning that essentializes a group of people and present one that would empower and humanize the victims of human trafficking instead. Only then we believed could we effectively communicate to our target group the dangers of going abroad while being sensitive to how our subject who was going to be depicted on our poster. In short, we challenged ourselves to be mindful of how we constructed the tone of our campaign in order to formulate a different campaign perspective on the subject of human trafficking.

Moreover, our campaign is not limited to one key visual. It also includes interactive elements in addition to a series of posters. Our campaign includes a series of posters that target young men that look for construction work, people looking to be nannies, or waiters at restaurants. We also included a series of pamphlets with two images on each side of the paper. One side of the pamphlet would have a person before they were trafficked holding a contract while the other side shows the same person after they were trafficked. The pamphlets would include the logo “check twice before you go abroad”. A third and final component of our campaign included posting false ads in newspapers that directed potential victims to a web page. When they arrived to the web page they find the image of our poster with a caption that reads “you could have been trafficked right now: check your contract twice before you go abroad”.

After working with Marek Dorobisz, creative director at Next agency for the last week, we are confident that in the future we will be better equipped in communicating our thoughts into images and translating them into effective slogans. Ultimately, we hope to continue to use the skills we learned from this social campaigning exercise to our respective areas of focus in the future. Thank you, HIA Poland!