The Zimbabwean Trillion Dollar Campaign celebrates the freedom of speech – and after winning the Grand Prix in the 2009 Disruption Awards the jury at the 2009 Cannes Lions honored the South African campaign with an unseen amount of Cannes Lions: so far three Gold, one Silver and one Grand Prix.

The campaign was designed to raise awareness regarding the plight of The Zimbabwean newspaper and consisted of various creative elements, including a billboard, all made up entirely of Zimbabwean Dollar bank notes. The newspaper, the brainchild of journalists driven into exile, is committed to providing independent and fair comment on Zimbabwe to Zimbabweans, and has had a ‘luxury’ import duty of over 55% added to it by the Mugabe government, thus making it unaffordable to the average Zimbabwean citizen.

Damon Stapleton, Executive Creative Director says, “We don’t believe that information is a luxury, which is why we believe so strongly in this campaign. All of the campaign elements were made up from trillions and trillions of Zimbabwean Dollars, which in the end worked out cheaper than using paper. When we conceptualised the campaign the idea of using Zimbabwean Dollars came about; we couldn’t think of a stronger or clearer way to illustrate the seriousness of the situation in Zimbabwe. Effectively we turned the currency, a symbol of what is happening in the country, into the medium.”

Gavin Heron, Group Managing Director for TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris enthused, “As an agency we are thrilled and humbled by this win and couldn’t be prouder of our team! The aim when the team first started working on this campaign was to draw attention to the plight of The Zimbabwean newspaper and Zimbabwe as effectively as possibly. Winning these awards is the cherry on top of a great campaign which delivered exceptional sales results for The Zimbabwean. ”

If you have any suggestions or comments please email Gavin Heron.