4Ps B&M Take: How does one organise a mass protest intellectually? When the Stop Online Piracy Act was initiated in 2011-12, Wikipedia, Google, Reddit and thousands of other websites beseeched their users and civil society to oppose the Act – by online petitions and even by physically visiting the local government representative. Guess what? It worked. Amnesty International, the world’s leading human rights organisation, realises the power of such mass intellectual protests only too well. To that extent, Amnesty is now attempting to motivate people all across the world to document their protests in writing, especially to free political prisoners and those held without trial. But how does one really motivate someone to write, and that too to oppose? In the same way as one motivates a couch potato to run – by organising a glamorous marathon, literally. Amnesty is now organising annual writing marathons encouraging people to write letters demanding the freeing of prisoners of conscience. The Amnesty advertisement, a 97 second collage that brilliantly documents details of the writing marathon, is now reaching the top of the global viral campaigns. The advertisement starts by describing, in simple words, why Amnesty is organising the marathon and how people are participating in it. Apparently, in all the countries where this marathon is being organised, not only is Amnesty providing the paper and the pencils, but even sharpeners, where the ad draws a metaphors between the amount of waste left after sharpening the pencil and global injustice – in other words, the more the waste, the more the written protests, the lesser the injustice that occurs across the world.
But the advertisement intelligently invokes the feeling of guilt in the viewer. The strong voice-over comments during the closing, “This Saturday, you probably won’t have the time to write, because of all the laundry, cleaning, kids’ practice sessions, groceries, family, work, sleep… This Saturday, take the time out, because they don’t have much left.” With the voice-over are displayed searing images of political prisoners being tortured, abused, and killed. Come to think of it, the impact of the advertisement is such that not only is the brand recall long lasting (not Amnesty’s – they don’t need recall – but the writing marathon’s), but the request is also so minimal as to be utterly convincing – not money or social work, just a piece of your writing time. And of course, there’s social sense in us promoting the ad too, which seems better than telling you all to drink more cola. Come on, lift up the pencil and start protesting.
