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Amnesty International NZ: Trial by TimelineThe Communication Agencies Association of New Zealand

Bronze, New Zealand Effie Awards, 2013


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Amnesty International NZ: Trial by Timeline

Campaign details

Category:Limited Budget: Less than $300,000

Agency:Colenso BBDO/Proximity New Zealand

Client:Amnesty International NZ

Summary

In a country as fortunate as New Zealand, Amnesty International is a movement understood and supported by just a few.

To increase awareness and support, Amnesty wanted to give New Zealanders a first-hand experience of life in countries

where human rights aren't afforded.

So they created Trial by Timelinean application that interrogates your Facebook Timeline and shows you what your

behaviour could have cost you in other countries around the world, just for being you.

This is the story of how a local campaign managed to reach over 15 million people.

Key learnings

To start to change the overall perception of Amnesty International, Colenso BBDO/Proximity New Zealand had to find a

tangible way of bringing Amnesty's message home to everyday Kiwis. They needed to enable people to experience first-hand

what it might be like to live without basic human rights by talking to them in a place where they're already engaged and freely

sharing in conversations. They had to make the charity accessible to more people and find a way to communicate with them in

a personal and relatable way.

Marketing challenge and objectives

By nature we are driven by self-interest, so the challenge was to get as many Kiwis as possible to understand and support the

work of Amnesty International's global movement to stand up for human rights. Colenso BBDO/Proximity New Zealand chose

to do this by bringing the plight of those less fortunate than ourselves as close as possible to the lives of New Zealanders.

As a charity, there was no budget for paid media. BB needed to create something that people would talk about and share and

so virality was a key deliverable for this campaign.

The campaign objectives were to raise awareness and engagement using www.trialbytimeline.org.nz . The goal was 100,000

Title: Amnesty International NZ: Trial by Timeline

Source: The Communication Agencies Association of New Zealand

Issue: Bronze, New Zealand Effie Awards, 2013

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unique visits to the site with people spending on average 3 minutes there. Viral Reach and shareability were vital so targets of

500 thousand people via Twitter and one million on Facebook were set. They also aimed to grow Amnesty International New

Zealand Facebook community by 100%, creating a bigger base to communicate with in the future.

Creative insight and strategy

A Facebook application was the key tool for this campaign. Named Trial by Timeline, it could scan people's Facebook Timeline

activity, searching everything they've ever liked, posted or written and then 'sentence' them.

No religious status? Being an atheist is punishable. Group photos? Unauthorised gatherings are punishable. Swear words?

Yes, that's punishable too - illustrating that were it not for our good fortune in living where we do, our lives could look very

different.

Amnesty International's own black and yellow identity supplied a striking palette, providing visualisation of acts of terrible

violence with impact, while avoiding the grotesque. A scattering of people's personal photographs added to the intrusion.

Once the trial is complete, the user receives a summary of punishments they would have received, identifying the countries

around the world where these crimes are being allowed. For example, you could have been stoned for drinking alcohol,

imprisoned and beaten just for talking to the opposite sex, or hung for pre-marital sex.

Finally, it asks users to take advantage of their freedom to help free others from such atrocities by showing their support for

Amnesty International.

The reality of the potential implications of 'normal' Western behaviour shocked and provoked New Zealanders to act, sharing

their results with their friends and creating viral reach for the campaign and Amnesty's message.

Communications strategy

With no media budget Colenso BBDO/Proximity New Zealand used PR and social media, and as the website went live, they

launched a PR campaign across as many major TV, radio and news stations, IT publications and websites as possible.

Amnesty launched the message to their existing communities through Facebook and Twitter. Colenso BBDO/Proximity New

Zealand tapped into Amnesty's network of local supporters to spark the social sharing aspect of the campaign.

From there, as people started to engage with the site, the campaign grew through viral reach and sharing via social media,

blogs and PR. As various people and influencers picked up on the application, put themselves on trial and shared their results,

there were spikes of traffic and mentions from different parts of the worldnow reaching over 200 countries and counting.

Results

Objective:100,000 unique visits to www.trialbytimeline.co.nz site.

Result:340,000 unique visits to the microsite.

Objective:average time spent on site 3 minutes.

Result:average visit duration was 7:27 minutes.

Twitter Objectives:viral reach of 500,000 people.


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Result:The campaign proved effective at reaching key online influencers, with the average number of followers for people

sharing their results being 1,609, leading to a total reach figure of 6,821,358 people to date (not including retweets)more

than 13 times the objective.

Facebook Objectives:viral reach of 1,000,000 people (25% of the population of New Zealand).

Result:the Facebook campaign has reached almost 9 million people so far.

Additional Facebook Objective:grow Amnesty International New Zealand Facebook community by 100%.

Result:this target was smashed, increasing Amnesty International New Zealand's Facebook community by more than 500%,

from 3,720 to 20,000.

Although this project is in its infancy, it has already gathered global traction and reached over 200 countries. Amnesty sections

in Sweden, Turkey, South Korea, Denmark and Norway have requested translations of the software.

Copyright Communication Agencies Association of New Zealand 2013

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