The Campaign

Our idea was to convince people that even the smallest piece of paper can have an afterlife. Hence, we created the artwork for our ad using nothing but Chads, the tiny pieces of paper left behind after a paper is punched. To reinforce our message, we used a strong cultural reference to demonstrate this fact.

Execution

To convince people that even the smallest piece of paper can have an afterlife, we developed a series of 3 press ads which depict 3 different Sri Lankan devil masks, created using Chads. The significance of using devil masks is that they represent the afterlife in Sri Lankan arts and culture. What’s more, we went a step ahead in taking our message to the nation by also employing a one of a kind media strategy where we punched every page of all newspapers printed that day to collect the chads for recycling, to further reinforce and actively embody our message.

Our work became instant hits on social media as well as local and international news segments. At the end of our campaign, Ceylon Today collected the cache of punched paper pieces and recycled them as a symbolic gesture, further creating massive PR responses. With it, Ceylon Today demonstrated just how big an impact we can make on the world, with the smallest of things.

The Situation

This work is relevant to the category because our series of 3 press ads generated a seismic response from the Sri Lankan community and international community at large. It is because we succeeded in changing the approach to recycling rather than just print a timely reminder. To do this, we revealed a basic human truth in our campaign, and recycled the tiniest pieces of paper we could find, which reminding Sri Lankans that ‘even a tiny piece has an afterlife’, seeing a punched newspaper for the first time, garnered immense social media reactions, which ultimately caught the attention of local and international news segments

The Strategy

Our strategy entailed recycling the world’s smallest pieces of paper. So, we used Chads – the tiny fragments of paper left behind after papers are punched – to create our series of press ads which depicted 3 different devil masks to take our message of “even a tiny piece has an afterlife”. The devil masks served two purposes in our campaign as not only was it a symbol of the afterlife in Sri Lankan culture, it also instilled a fear of wasting amongst our target audience which was a majority of Sri Lankans, seeing as how Ceylon Today is the country’s national English daily.