TALKING BONES

TitleTALKING BONES
BrandDIGNITY INSTITUTE
Product/ServiceCHARITY
Category A08. Charities, Public Health & Safety, Public Awareness Messages
Entrant GREY PARIS, FRANCE
Idea Creation GREY PARIS, FRANCE
PR GREY PARIS, FRANCE
Credits
Name Company Position
Thierry Astier Grey Paris Executive Creative Director
Romain Arrigoni Grey Paris Art Director
Nicolas Richard Grey Paris Copywriter
Francois Bricage Grey Paris Director
Charlotte Buisson Grey Paris Communication Manager
Fabio Caldironi / DoP
/ LatheCutRecords Vinyl Maker
Abril Castillo / Videographer
/ Studio Lacen Photography
Philippe Hebrard Ipanema Music Managing Director
Franck Delabre Possible Managing Director
Stephane Martin Possible Managing Director

The Campaign

Governments included, nobody cares about torture victims because nobody is aware that 125,000 of them are actually living on French soil. Our idea was to make these invisible people, visible. That's why we recorded real audio testimonies of real victims and engraved them on their own real medical X-rays. The result is a surprising vinyl record made of X-rays that we launched as a real Rock Band called « Talking Bones ».

Creative Execution

The product is a record made of medical X-rays. For the engraving part, we used an old technique used by the Russians during the Cold War for importing prohibited American Rock’n’Roll under Stalin’s reign. After months of research, we found only one company able to take this technique and adapt it to modern X-rays. To surprise the influencers, we wanted these 50 x-rays records to really look like a real Rock Band’s. This is why we created a fake Rock Band named "Talking Bones" and designed fake record sleeve. We purposefully used blue and white on the record sleeve to recall the medical X-ray chroma. We also covered the face of the girl on the sleeve to give another visual indication that this record is about “hidden testimony”.

Results

Sent to 50 influencers, these records generated : 250 PR articles 9.5 M media impressions 200K mentions on twitter and Instagram +170% website traffic increase 1 ex minister of health embraced the cause and decided to actively lobby the French government.

The core idea of the campaign is to send mailings to key influencers purposefully chosen. This is a pure direct marketing campaign.

Instead of creating the umpteenth shocking campaign about torture, we wanted to create a product distinctive enough to generate attention and ignite conversation on its own. We launched these vinyl records exactly as if we were launching a Rock Band, "Talking Bones". We sent copies of the X-rays records to key French influencers with a video explaining the process. Influencers were chosen for : - Their cultural relevance with the product (music medias, experts of Rock’n’ Roll) - Their political influence (ex Health Minister) - Pop culture actors - Bloggers with large audiences