Winners & Shortlists

ABORTIONTRAVEL

Gold Eurobest

Case Film

Presentation Board

TitleABORTIONTRAVEL
BrandCELEM (EUROPEAN WOMEN'S LOBBY)
Product/ServiceSPANISH COORDINATION FOR THE EUROPEAN WOMEN'S LOBBY
Category C08. CHARITIES, FUNDRAISING, APPEALS, NON-PROFIT ORGANISATIONS, PUBLIC HEALTH & SAFETY, PUBLIC AWARENESS
Entrant Company DDB SPAIN Madrid, SPAIN
Advertising Agency DDB SPAIN Madrid, SPAIN
Credits
Name Company Position
Jose Mª Roca De Viñals DDB Spain Chief Creative Officer
Guillermo Santaisabel DDB Spain Executive Creative Director
Javier Urbaneja Ddb Spain Technology Creative Director
Cristina Rodriguez DDB Spain Art Director
Federico Arce DDB Spain Btl Team
Fernando Alvarez DDB Spain Btl Team
Carlos Guerrero DDB Spain Digital Programmer
Plug/In Digital Programmer Studio
Tesauro Production Company
Mariona Cruz DDB Spain Account Supervisor
Gabriela Castro DDB Spain Account Executive
Alberto Escudero Photographer
Jorge De La Hermosa Photographer

The Brief

On 20 December,the Spanish Government announced that it would be making changes to the current law on abortion. These measures,will make it one of the most restrictive in the world;even prohibiting the termination of a pregnancy in cases where the foetus is malformed.Worldwide media are debating the measures the Spanish Government wishes to take,and denouncing them as an abuse of power.Women in Spain took the streets on a massive scale,but the Government paid them no heed.Our goal,was to collect signatures,mobilise people in Spain against the changes to the abortion law,and get them to reopen the debate to prevent the proposed changes,unthinkable in most countries of the world,from being passed.

Creative Execution

The campaign attracted the media's and the public's attention because it highlighted aspects which had not been previously analysed in the debate and the civil protests: - What it would cost women obliged to travel outside Spain to have an abortion (both economic and emotionally). -That those who had the resources could continue having abortions despite the law. -That this situation could be very big business. By placing the public in the aftermath of what our customer was seeking to prevent, there was a sense of outrage leading to a massive media and public response. However, its most important aspect was that the campaign reached the Chamber of Deputies, reopening the debate on the proposed changes to the abortion law.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

To illustrate this reality we created a fictitious agency specialising in arranging trips to have an abortion outside Spain: Abortion Travel, 'the agency that should never exist.' We opened the physical agency in premises in Madrid with the external appearance and operations of a normal travel agency. The agency was the campaign's headquarters: a press conference was held there, women were informed about the consequences of the proposed changes to the law, and signatures were directly collected to prevent it being passed. We expected the physical travel agency to make headlines and collect around 5,000 signatures over the three days it remained open.

Results

35,000+ signatures on our petition at change.org while the physical agency was open (collecting thousands more signatures online later on). A hit on national and international media with a ROI of €1,044,103 and an audience of more than 38.5 million people. 3 million impressions on Twitter. In addition, the agency was visited by figures from the worlds of culture and politics. The campaign reached the Spanish Chamber of Deputies where parliamentarians and the Vice President of Congress were obliged to address it in statements. We managed to reopen the debate and made the ruling party rethink the law.