The Brief

The campaign aimed to raise awareness on the sufferings of North Korean refugees to South Koreans. Despite the NGOs' past traditional marketing efforts to raise awareness, many South Koreans, especially those in their 20s, remained indifferent to them and their sufferings. The brief called for a new and appealing way to reach out to them.

Creative Execution

We brought to light the sufferings of North Korean refugees in a non-traditional way. By using the unique 3D scanning and printing technologies to create these figurines and embedding them with the refugees’ emotional stories, people would be attracted and compelled to find out more about the refugees. Moreover, the figurines were hidden in the museum. So visitors could seek them out, like in a scavenger hunt.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

UNHCR, the UN's refugee agency, held an exhibition titled "Invisible People" at the Seoul Museum of Art. The refugees and their emotional stories were incarnated in the form of figurines, created from advanced 3D scans and prints. Instead of displaying them conventionally, the figurines were hidden in the museum so visitors had to find them. Once spotted, visitors were engaged by emotional clips about the refugees' sufferings. They simply had to tap their QR/NFC-enabled mobiles on the figurines.

Results

In just three weeks, the exhibition garnered significant interest – 48,216 people visited the exhibition and more than 5,000 encouraging messages were posted on the Facebook page and sent to the refugees. Although the campaign wasn't intended to raise funds, 87 people signed up to become sponsors of UNHCR's global refugee efforts. In total, 3.5 million people came to know about the refugees through word of mouth, social media and mass media. Due to the success of the campaign, foreign museums have approached UNHCR to hold similar exhibitions in their countries.