Why Me?

This has got to be one of my favorite advertising campaigns of the year, the Trillion Dollar campaign for the Zimbabwean Newspaper created by TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris. Check the Zimbabwean Newspaper's flickr page for more photos for the campaign. A bit about some of the different pieces of the campaign below, then the press release below that. A big thanks goes out to Nadja for sending this over to me.

Billboard made out of real money
A billboard for ‘The Zimbabwean Newspaper’ made entirely of worthless Zimbabwean bank notes. What more proof do you need of a country’s total economic collapse than being able to paste trillions and trillions and trillions of dollar notes onto a billboard and it is still cheaper than if you had used paper?

Money Wallpaper
A wall mural for ‘The Zimbabwean Newspaper’ made up of worthless Zimbabwean bank notes. A trillion Zimbabwean dollars can’t buy you any advertising, it can’t even buy you the paper to print your message on, so you might as well turn the money into your advertising.

Trillion dollar flyers and posters
A trillion dollar hand-out. To highlight the plight of Zimbabwe and the cause of the ‘Zimbabwean Newspaper’ we handed out trillions of dollars of worthless Zimbabwean money stamped with provocative messages and a call for support for the Zimbabwean newspaper, we also turned the money into giant posters, with trillion dollar tear-offs.

"Cholera, poverty, starvation and total economic collapse. It is for reporting on these things over the past five years that Zimbabwean journalists have been exiled. A group of these journalists, now based around the world, have come together to produce a newspaper called The Zimbabwean. Published in South Africa and sold here, in the UK and in Zimbabwe itself,The Zimbabwean newspaper and its staff have been persecuted by the Mugabe regime. Unable to stop the paper entering Zimbabwe, the ZANU regime targets it with a duty. It’s the only ‘foreign’ paper that has its price doubled as it crosses the border. For impoverished Zimbabweans, the heavy duty on the paper makes it unaffordable. To get the paper into their hands, The Zimbabwean realised they would have to sell many more papers in South Africa. But most South Africans are already tired of hearing about bad news from our northern neighbour. The challenge was to bring them face to face with the problem. The huge denominations of worthless Zimbabwean currency are a poignant symbol of the country’s ruined economy as well as the hardships ordinary Zimbabweans face each day. The Zimbabwean newspaper has launched a campaign in which these horrific banknotes literally carry the message. Originally printed with pictures of a once-beautiful and prosperous country, the Zimbabwean has added its message: it’s now cheaper to print on money than paper.

Flyers, posters, murals and billboards- all composed of trillions and trillions of worthless Zimbabwean currency- are making their way around the city of Johannesburg this week. For once, this currency has a purpose: To highlight the ongoing crisis that faces the people of Zimbabwe, and to promote the freedom of the press that will help."