The Trillion Dollar Campaign
Encyclopedia
The Trillion Dollar Campaign is an outdoor
advertising campaign
launched in 2009 to promote the newspaper The Zimbabwean in South Africa. The campaign was created by advertising agency
TBWA Hunt Lascaris with the goal of both increasing awareness of the newspaper itself, and of the growing problems of hyperinflation in Zimbabwe
and increasing restrictions on free speech by the government. The Trillion Dollar Campaign made extensive use of Zimbabwean banknotes
, repurposing them as printing paper for handouts, billboard
s, and poster
advertisements. The campaign was highly successful, and gathered significant publicity; first in other South African newspapers, then in other media such as television and radio, and finally in international publications such as The Guardian
and The Times
. The Trillion Dollar Campaign went on to win several honours from the marketing community, receiving Golds at The Art Directors Club Awards and the ANDY Awards, and taking home the Grand Prix in the Outdoor category of the 2009 Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival
, the most prestigious awards ceremony in the advertising industry.
, and Mbanga was declared an "Enemy of the People". Following several death threats, Mbanga fled to Europe, staying first in The Netherlands before moving on to the United Kingdom
.
With monetary assistance from the European Union
, Mbanga founded The Zimbabwean, a daily newspaper featuring stories provided by in-country correspondents, edited in London, and printed in South Africa, close to the Zimbabwean border. Within five years, The Zimbabwean had a daily print run
of 150,000, the majority of which was exported to Zimbabwe itself. However, in June 2008, the country's government re-classified the newspaper as a luxury
, imposing a 55% duty
on its import from South Africa. This made it impossible for the paper to break even
while selling the paper at a price that the average citizen could afford. By 2009, circulation of the newspaper fell from 150,000 to 30,000, and the paper had had to cancel its Sunday installment.
The Zimbabwean approached Johannesburg
-based advertising agency
TBWA/Hunt/Lascaris for ideas on how to make the export of the paper to Zimbabwe economically viable. The concept for the campaign was born from a meeting between the two companies, when representatives from the newspaper showed examples of the currency used to purchase The Zimbabwean in Zimbabwe itself. After years of hyperinflation
, the Zimbabwean Dollar
had reached the point where the face value
of many banknote
s (which had reached denominations as high as Z$100,000,000,000,000) was less than the value of the paper itself.
With a limited budget, (only £4000 was available for the purchase of advertising space,) TBWA came back with a pitch to, through a low-cost outdoor advertising campaign
, highlight the growing crisis by printing advertising on real banknotes, using the collapse of the currency as an analogy for the collapse of Zimbabwe itself. The resulting media coverage would be leveraged to increase sales of the paper outside of Zimbabwe, primarily the large communities of Zimbabwean expatriates living in the United Kingdom and southern Africa. The extra funds would be used to subsidise
sales of the paper to the actual target audience for the paper in-country.
s, the website address for The Zimbabwean, its logo, and its tagline
"A voice for the voiceless", were handed out to motorists stopped at busy intersections in Johannesburg. Rolls of the altered currency were mailed to industry figures, media personalities, and politicians. Poster
s were put up at every location selling copies of the newspaper in the city, mural
s 1.5 m (4.9 ft) tall by 5 m (16.4 ft) wide were pasted across walls along streets with heavy foot traffic, and billboard
spaces were purchased overlooking several highways. All were composed of hundreds or thousands of banknotes, which could be detached and taken home by members of the public. The four slogans used in the campaign were "Fight The Regime That Has Crippled A Country", "It's Cheaper To Print This On Money Than Paper", "Z$250 000 000 Cannot Buy The Paper To Print This Poster On", and "Thanks to Mugabe
This Money Is Wallpaper".
The campaign's release immediately grabbed the attention of the media. By the time the first billboard had been put up, mentions appeared on South African national television and radio broadcasts. Features on The Trillion Dollar Campaign began to appear, first in national newspapers such as Sake24, then in international publications such as The Times
. The extensive media coverage of the campaign translated into an impressive jump in both public awareness of the Zimbabwean and its message, and in sales figures. In the first week following the launch, hits
to The Zimbabweans website spiked from its norm of 100,000 to over 2,000,000. By June 2009, sales of the paper had increased by 276%, and images from the campaign uploaded to the paper's account on image hosting website
Flickr
had been viewed over 200,000 times.
The Trillion Dollar Campaign received a number of honours from the advertising industry, including winning Golds at the Art Directors Club Awards, the ANDY Awards,and the Loerie Awards. In the run-up to the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival
, the most prestigious awards ceremony in the advertising industry, the campaign was pipped to win in several categories. The most difficult to call was for the Outdoor/Ambient category, where The Trillion Dollar Campaign faced off against a number of non-traditional campaigns, including an ambient campaign titled In The Street
s, created by advertising agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty
to promote Oasis
' seventh studio album, Dig Out Your Soul
. Over the seven-day series of awards presentations, the team behind The Trillion Dollar Campaign received awards in six categories: five Golds and a Silver, and took home the Grand Prix in the Outdoor category, the highest number of awards ever received by a South African campaign at Cannes. Following the conclusion of the campaign, the Zimbabwean government announced the reversal of its decision to re-classify The Zimbabwean as a luxury item, and the import duty imposed on the paper was dropped.
Out-of-home advertising
Out-of-home advertising is made up of more than 100 different formats, totaling $6.99 billion in annual revenues in 2008 in the USA. Outdoor advertising is essentially any type of advertising that reaches the consumer while he or she is outside the home...
advertising campaign
Advertising campaign
An advertising campaign is a series of advertisement messages that share a single idea and theme which make up an integrated marketing communication...
launched in 2009 to promote the newspaper The Zimbabwean in South Africa. The campaign was created by advertising agency
Advertising agency
An advertising agency or ad agency is a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising for its clients. An ad agency is independent from the client and provides an outside point of view to the effort of selling the client's products or services...
TBWA Hunt Lascaris with the goal of both increasing awareness of the newspaper itself, and of the growing problems of hyperinflation in Zimbabwe
Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe
Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe began shortly after destruction of productive capacity in Zimbabwe's civil war and confiscation of white-owned farmland. Food output capacity fell 45%, manufacturing output 29% in 2005, 26% in 2006 and 28% in 2007, and unemployment rose to 80%...
and increasing restrictions on free speech by the government. The Trillion Dollar Campaign made extensive use of Zimbabwean banknotes
Zimbabwean dollar
The Zimbabwean dollar was the official currency of Zimbabwe from 1980 to 12 April 2009....
, repurposing them as printing paper for handouts, billboard
Billboard
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
s, and poster
Poster
A poster is any piece of printed paper designed to be attached to a wall or vertical surface. Typically posters include both textual and graphic elements, although a poster may be either wholly graphical or wholly text. Posters are designed to be both eye-catching and informative. Posters may be...
advertisements. The campaign was highly successful, and gathered significant publicity; first in other South African newspapers, then in other media such as television and radio, and finally in international publications such as The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
and The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
. The Trillion Dollar Campaign went on to win several honours from the marketing community, receiving Golds at The Art Directors Club Awards and the ANDY Awards, and taking home the Grand Prix in the Outdoor category of the 2009 Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival
Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival
The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is a global event for those working in advertising and related fields. The seven-day festival, incorporating the awarding of the Lions awards, is held yearly at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès in Cannes, France...
, the most prestigious awards ceremony in the advertising industry.
Background
In 1999, Wilf Mbanga founded an independent Zimbabwean newspaper titled The Daily News, with the goal of providing neutral coverage of events occurring in the country. The paper operated for three years before Mbanga was arrested for anti-government activities. While he was eventually acquitted of the charges, The Daily News was banned by the government of ZimbabwePolitics of Zimbabwe
Politics of Zimbabwe takes place in a framework of a semi-presidential republic, whereby the President is the head of state and the Prime Minister is the head of government. Executive power is exercised by the government...
, and Mbanga was declared an "Enemy of the People". Following several death threats, Mbanga fled to Europe, staying first in The Netherlands before moving on to the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
.
With monetary assistance from the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
, Mbanga founded The Zimbabwean, a daily newspaper featuring stories provided by in-country correspondents, edited in London, and printed in South Africa, close to the Zimbabwean border. Within five years, The Zimbabwean had a daily print run
Newspaper circulation
A newspaper's circulation is the number of copies it distributes on an average day. Circulation is one of the principal factors used to set advertising rates. Circulation is not always the same as copies sold, often called paid circulation, since some newspapers are distributed without cost to the...
of 150,000, the majority of which was exported to Zimbabwe itself. However, in June 2008, the country's government re-classified the newspaper as a luxury
Luxury good
Luxury goods are products and services that are not considered essential and associated with affluence.The concept of luxury has been present in various forms since the beginning of civilization. Its role was just as important in ancient western and eastern empires as it is in modern societies...
, imposing a 55% duty
Duty (economics)
In economics, a duty is a kind of tax, often associated with customs, a payment due to the revenue of a state, levied by force of law. It is a tax on certain items purchased abroad...
on its import from South Africa. This made it impossible for the paper to break even
Break-even
Break-even is a point where any difference between plus or minus or equivalent changes side.-In economics:A technique for which identifying the point where the total revenue is just sufficient to cover the total cost...
while selling the paper at a price that the average citizen could afford. By 2009, circulation of the newspaper fell from 150,000 to 30,000, and the paper had had to cancel its Sunday installment.
Campaign
Johannesburg
Johannesburg also known as Jozi, Jo'burg or Egoli, is the largest city in South Africa, by population. Johannesburg is the provincial capital of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa, having the largest economy of any metropolitan region in Sub-Saharan Africa...
-based advertising agency
Advertising agency
An advertising agency or ad agency is a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising for its clients. An ad agency is independent from the client and provides an outside point of view to the effort of selling the client's products or services...
TBWA/Hunt/Lascaris for ideas on how to make the export of the paper to Zimbabwe economically viable. The concept for the campaign was born from a meeting between the two companies, when representatives from the newspaper showed examples of the currency used to purchase The Zimbabwean in Zimbabwe itself. After years of hyperinflation
Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe
Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe began shortly after destruction of productive capacity in Zimbabwe's civil war and confiscation of white-owned farmland. Food output capacity fell 45%, manufacturing output 29% in 2005, 26% in 2006 and 28% in 2007, and unemployment rose to 80%...
, the Zimbabwean Dollar
Zimbabwean dollar
The Zimbabwean dollar was the official currency of Zimbabwe from 1980 to 12 April 2009....
had reached the point where the face value
Face value
The Face value is the value of a coin, stamp or paper money, as printed on the coin, stamp or bill itself by the minting authority. While the face value usually refers to the true value of the coin, stamp or bill in question it can sometimes be largely symbolic, as is often the case with bullion...
of many banknote
Banknote
A banknote is a kind of negotiable instrument, a promissory note made by a bank payable to the bearer on demand, used as money, and in many jurisdictions is legal tender. In addition to coins, banknotes make up the cash or bearer forms of all modern fiat money...
s (which had reached denominations as high as Z$100,000,000,000,000) was less than the value of the paper itself.
With a limited budget, (only £4000 was available for the purchase of advertising space,) TBWA came back with a pitch to, through a low-cost outdoor advertising campaign
Out-of-home advertising
Out-of-home advertising is made up of more than 100 different formats, totaling $6.99 billion in annual revenues in 2008 in the USA. Outdoor advertising is essentially any type of advertising that reaches the consumer while he or she is outside the home...
, highlight the growing crisis by printing advertising on real banknotes, using the collapse of the currency as an analogy for the collapse of Zimbabwe itself. The resulting media coverage would be leveraged to increase sales of the paper outside of Zimbabwe, primarily the large communities of Zimbabwean expatriates living in the United Kingdom and southern Africa. The extra funds would be used to subsidise
Subsidy
A subsidy is an assistance paid to a business or economic sector. Most subsidies are made by the government to producers or distributors in an industry to prevent the decline of that industry or an increase in the prices of its products or simply to encourage it to hire more labor A subsidy (also...
sales of the paper to the actual target audience for the paper in-country.
Release and reception
The Trillion Dollar Campaign was launched in March 2009. Banknotes of denominations between Z$1,000,000 and Z$100,000,000,000, each bearing one of four English-language advertising sloganAdvertising slogan
Advertising slogans are short, often memorable phrases used in advertising campaigns. They are claimed to be the most effective means of drawing attention to one or more aspects of a product. A strapline is a British term used as a secondary sentence attached to a brand name...
s, the website address for The Zimbabwean, its logo, and its tagline
Tagline
A tagline is a variant of a branding slogan typically used in marketing materials and advertising. The idea behind the concept is to create a memorable phrase that will sum up the tone and premise of a brand or product , or to reinforce the audience's memory of a product...
"A voice for the voiceless", were handed out to motorists stopped at busy intersections in Johannesburg. Rolls of the altered currency were mailed to industry figures, media personalities, and politicians. Poster
Poster
A poster is any piece of printed paper designed to be attached to a wall or vertical surface. Typically posters include both textual and graphic elements, although a poster may be either wholly graphical or wholly text. Posters are designed to be both eye-catching and informative. Posters may be...
s were put up at every location selling copies of the newspaper in the city, mural
Mural
A mural is any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other large permanent surface. A particularly distinguishing characteristic of mural painting is that the architectural elements of the given space are harmoniously incorporated into the picture.-History:Murals of...
s 1.5 m (4.9 ft) tall by 5 m (16.4 ft) wide were pasted across walls along streets with heavy foot traffic, and billboard
Billboard
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
spaces were purchased overlooking several highways. All were composed of hundreds or thousands of banknotes, which could be detached and taken home by members of the public. The four slogans used in the campaign were "Fight The Regime That Has Crippled A Country", "It's Cheaper To Print This On Money Than Paper", "Z$250 000 000 Cannot Buy The Paper To Print This Poster On", and "Thanks to Mugabe
Robert Mugabe
Robert Gabriel Mugabe is the President of Zimbabwe. As one of the leaders of the liberation movement against white-minority rule, he was elected into power in 1980...
This Money Is Wallpaper".
The campaign's release immediately grabbed the attention of the media. By the time the first billboard had been put up, mentions appeared on South African national television and radio broadcasts. Features on The Trillion Dollar Campaign began to appear, first in national newspapers such as Sake24, then in international publications such as The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
. The extensive media coverage of the campaign translated into an impressive jump in both public awareness of the Zimbabwean and its message, and in sales figures. In the first week following the launch, hits
Hit (internet)
A hit is a request to a web server for a file . When a web page is uploaded from a server the number of "hits" or "page hits" is equal to the number of files requested. Therefore, one page load does not always equal one hit because often pages are made up of other images and other files which stack...
to The Zimbabweans website spiked from its norm of 100,000 to over 2,000,000. By June 2009, sales of the paper had increased by 276%, and images from the campaign uploaded to the paper's account on image hosting website
Image hosting service
An image hosting service allows individuals to upload images to an Internet website. The image host will then store the image onto its server, and show the individual different types of code to allow others to view that image....
Flickr
Flickr
Flickr is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community that was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to...
had been viewed over 200,000 times.
The Trillion Dollar Campaign received a number of honours from the advertising industry, including winning Golds at the Art Directors Club Awards, the ANDY Awards,and the Loerie Awards. In the run-up to the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival
Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival
The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is a global event for those working in advertising and related fields. The seven-day festival, incorporating the awarding of the Lions awards, is held yearly at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès in Cannes, France...
, the most prestigious awards ceremony in the advertising industry, the campaign was pipped to win in several categories. The most difficult to call was for the Outdoor/Ambient category, where The Trillion Dollar Campaign faced off against a number of non-traditional campaigns, including an ambient campaign titled In The Street
In the Street
In the Street is an album by the Village People featuring the return of its original lead singer Victor Willis. Ray Simpson who had replaced Willis is featured on two songs on the album . The G.I. Alex Briley also sings lead on one song...
s, created by advertising agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty
Bartle Bogle Hegarty
Bartle Bogle Hegarty is a British advertising agency, responsible for some notable advertising campaigns of the last 30 years. The company was founded by John Bartle, Nigel Bogle & Sir John Hegarty in 1982. Sir John Hegarty and Nigel Bogle still lead it today, together with worldwide CEO Simon...
to promote Oasis
Oasis (band)
Oasis were an English rock band formed in Manchester in 1991. Originally known as The Rain, the group was formed by Liam Gallagher , Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs , Paul "Guigsy" McGuigan and Tony McCarroll , who were soon joined by Liam's older brother Noel Gallagher...
' seventh studio album, Dig Out Your Soul
Dig Out Your Soul
Dig Out Your Soul is the seventh and final studio album by English rock band Oasis. It was released in October 2008. The first single, "The Shock of the Lightning", was released on 29 September 2008. In promotion of the album, the band embarked on a world tour, debuting in Seattle, Washington at...
. Over the seven-day series of awards presentations, the team behind The Trillion Dollar Campaign received awards in six categories: five Golds and a Silver, and took home the Grand Prix in the Outdoor category, the highest number of awards ever received by a South African campaign at Cannes. Following the conclusion of the campaign, the Zimbabwean government announced the reversal of its decision to re-classify The Zimbabwean as a luxury item, and the import duty imposed on the paper was dropped.
External links
- The Zimbabwean website
- The Trillion Dollar Campaign at FlickrFlickrFlickr is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community that was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to...
.com.