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2018 One Show - Public Relations

Flash Drives For Freedom

Agency BUENA / Portland + Human Rights Foundation / New York

Client Human Rights Foundation
BACK TO RESULTS

Annual ID

OS_PR18006S

About the Work

Flash Drives for Freedom is a campaign to smuggle the outside world into North Korea using donated USB drives. The drives are erased, filled with content from the outside world – such as movies, soap operas, books and the Wikipedia. To accomplish this, activists used traditional smuggle networks on the Chinese border. We inspired people to donate in an audacious way—shove it in Kim Jong-un's mouth—a representation of how flash drives could someday silence the dictatorship. We created an installation with hundreds of his mouths replaced by an USB port. Every time someone inserted a flash drive, an audio loop of a real Kim propaganda speech stopped playing. 1.3 million North Koreans have used the USB drives. $6 million earned media. The subject of documentaries by Vice, Frontline, PBS Newshour, Economist. 10k articles written about the campaign. 542 million media impressions. $0 spent on media.