Brief: Invite CEO’s, executives and government to a forum to discuss the challenges and opportunities facing South Africa in the public sector. Idea: It’s easy to complain and focus on the problems in a society rather than the opportunities. Yes, downgrades and financial turmoil are the order of the day. But there are still huge opportunities in and for South Africa. You have to inspire change and offer opportunities. If the story is depressing, you have to change the story. Our idea was to create a campaign that showed how, with the right insights and expertise, every negative could become a positive. The challenge was to create an engaging invitation that would entice the delegates to attend. By sending them an email that focused on a very negative outlook and led with very negative headlines extracted from the newspapers, we got their attention. By using a simple GIF to change the copy as they were reading it we showed them how, with the right people, they could change the story.
