Rivers of Light - a modern fairy tale, at Christmas time in Columbia, awarded in Cannes and available for your viewing pleasure on GoSee

For 60 years Columbia has been dealing with the world’s oldest guerrilla troop – the FARC. The big question facing the Ministry of Defence: how do you communicate with someone that is retreating further and further into the deepest, darkest depths of the forest? How can one finally get them to listen?

And so they opted for the following: the ministry used official channels (TV, radio, press) to ask friends and family of the guerrillas, as well as people that were directly affected by their fighting, plus any other person in the country, to write them their own message. Letters filled with love, longing, hope – and with the ultimate message that asked them to surrender their weapons and return home, if even just for Christmas.

All these messages were carefully packed into small, floating, airtight and glowing globes and released in rivers near suspected camps (FARCs always live near the water as the only ‘medium’ they trust) so that they might light up the way back home to freedom.

A total of 6,823 very personal messages were released. This resulted in one man returning home every six hours. Young men and old, small groups, high ranking guerrillos … an impressive result for the country which even affected the president.

The same goes for Cannes. A golden Lion was presented in the TITANIUM category, which Mr. Wieden invented in 2005. The campaign was supervised by LOWE-SSP3 Bogotá, Columbia.




RIVERS OF LIGHT
MINISTRY OF DEFENSE
HUMANITARIAN DEMOBILIZATION PROGRAM
Type of Entry: Titanium and Integrated
Advertising Agency: LOWE-SSP3 Bogotá, COLOMBIA
Jose Miguel Sokoloff Lowe/SSP3 Chief Executive Officer
Jaime Duque Lowe/SSP3 Creative Director
Santiago Mesa Lowe/SSP3 Creative Director
Carlos Rodriguez Lowe/SSP3 Art Director
Mario Lagos Lowe/SSP3 Copywriter
Sergio Leon Lowe/SSP3 Copywriter
Juan Pablo Garcia Lowe/SSP3 Account Director
Emiliano Arango Lowe/SSP3 Account Executive
Jose Altamar Lowe/SSP3 Producer