First Yellow Pencil for SA agency

Ireland Davenport has been nominated for a Yellow Pencil in the D&AD’s 2012 Direct Response/Digital category for its Free Zimbabwe Friend Request campaign.  This is a first for a South African agency.

Yellow Pencils are recognised the world over as a symbol of creative achievement.  Year on year the D&AD Annual showcases the very best work and continues to prove an unrivalled source of creative inspiration.  Work that is outstanding, rather than merely brilliant, wins a Yellow Pencil.

The campaign

Art Director) and Jenna Smith (Copywriter) at Ireland Davenport, the team responsible for the concept, explain the campaign:

We all receive “Friend Requests” every day.  It’s something we are used to, and take for granted. But what if you got a Facebook Friend Request you weren’t expecting. What if you got a Friend Request from Robert Mugabe?

To capture the attention of consumers who have been overexposed to requests for their help, people received a personalized friend request from Robert Mugabe. They were given the option of accepting or denying. Upon clicking the “deny” button, they were taken through to a Facebook page, where they had the chance to sign worldwide digital petitions for free and fair elections in Zimbabwe.

This campaign highlighted the fact that if you aren’t a part of the solution, you’re a part of the problem, and may as well be friends with Robert Mugabe.

Some really clever engineering by our friends at Buynary meant that once you received your personalized friend request, if you forwarded it your friends also received personalized friend requests from Robert.

The overall objective of the campaign was to raise awareness for the plight in Zimbabwe and for the Free Zimbabwe as an organization.