E06. Use of Music Streaming Platform or Video Hosting Service
Entrant
DDB BERLIN, GERMANY
Idea Creation
DDB BERLIN, GERMANY
Media Placement
DDB BERLIN, GERMANY
PR
FINCHFACTOR Amsterdam, THE NETHERLANDS
Production
DAHOUSE AUDIO São Paulo, BRAZIL
Production 2
LE TOUR DU MONDE São Paulo, BRAZIL
Production 3
MEDIAMONKS Amsterdam, THE NETHERLANDS
Credits
Name
Company
Position
Dennis May
DDB Group Germany
Chief Creative Officer
Gabriel Mattar
DDB Group Germany
Executive Creative Director
Ricardo Wolff
DDB Group Germany
Creative Director
Jack Christensen
DDB Group Germany
Senior Copywriter
Patrik Lenhart
DDB Group Germany
Senior Copywriter
Felipe Cury
DDB Group Germany
Senior Art Director
Marco Lemcke
DDB Group Germany
Senior Art Director
Lis Ferreira
DDB Group Germany
Junior Art Director
Evandro Scudeler
DDB Group Germany
Junior Art Director
Bianca Dordea
DDB Group Germany
Chief Executive DDB Berlin
Sarah Bensel
DDB Group Germany
Account Director
Lucas Mayer
DaHouse Audio
Music Director
Cassiano Derenji
DaHouse Audio
Account Manager
Iris Fuzaro
Le Tour Du Monde
Film Director
Sascha Gerlach
Sascha Gerlach
Editor
Lisa van Boekhout
finchfactor
PR
Why is this work relevant for Entertainment?
For The Uncensored Playlist, acclaimed independent journalists and musicians from all around the world worked together to turn censored articles into songs. Pop music became a Trojan Horse for free information. Contemporary music genres and traditional instruments from the world’s most repressed countries were merged into unique tracks that deliver an important message in an engaging way. By bringing censored news stories back to oppressed societies, we created music that not only took an innovative approach to evading censorship through music streaming platforms – but also produced tracks crafted to stand up as pieces of entertainment in their own right.
Background
Online press censorship is on the rise globally. But rather than just creating a traditional awareness campaign Reporters Without Borders Germany decided to tackle the problem head on.
Describe the creative idea
While in the worlds most censored countries many news websites and blogs are blocked by oppressive governments, music streaming platforms such as Spotify, Deezer and Apple Music are freely accessible.
We used this online loophole to evade censorship. Turning 5 acclaimed journalists from 5 repressed countries into music artists. Their censored articles were turned into lyrics and then uploaded onto music streaming platforms as uncensored pop songs.
On the 12th of March: World Day Against Cyber Censorship all the songs came together as The Uncensored Playlist.
Describe the strategy
Music has the power to connect with people of all ages, cultures and nationalities. Using music streaming services available in the worlds most censored countries was the perfect online loophole for reaching people in countries affected by censorship as well as around the world.
To highlight the problem further we selected 5 of the most poorly rated countries on the World Press Freedom Index where at least one well known music streaming service was available.
To appeal to people both locally and internationally each song was recorded in both English and local language versions, combining traditional instruments, local musicians and contemporary music styles.
The journalists were given the whole musical package, with record covers, album names, posters and artist biographies to create authenticity.
We spread the project online with a hashtag #truthfindsaway as well as using Reporters Without Borders large network of journalists to help spread the project.
Describe the execution
Our music team interviewed each of the journalists to capture the essence of their stories before transforming them into lyrics. While traveling incognito to the oppressed countries, they met local musicians, explored genres and the local instruments of each country and shot material to create music videos.
We created album artwork for 5 albums (one per country) before uploading them onto Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer. On World Day Against Cyber Censorship all the songs came together as The Uncensored Playlist along with our website www.uncensoreplaylist.com
featuring lyrics, articles, music documentary videos shot in the different countries and the hashtag #truthfindsaway
Meanwhile our support network of both local and international journalists spread word about the project far and wide in the traditional media and online.
And the online loophole worked perfectly, with the songs reaching all 5 countries as well as people around the world
Describe the outcome
The playlist sparked a global conversation about censorship with 300+ news stories and 680+ million people reached to date. Appearing in the global music and news media such as The Guardian, The Fader, Der Spiegel, Glamour, Pitchfork and the BBC: Reaching far more people than the original articles could ever have. But most importantly, our songs became hits in the places where the articles had once been forbidden: peaking at #7 in the Vietnamese iTunes chart in its very first week. Encouraging globally recognised names such as Amazon to support our message.
The Uncensored Playlist will continue to connect journalists with musicians. Defying censorship every time a new song is uploaded.