From June 21 to 25, the annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity took place, wherein a project created in Latvia has also won prizes after an extended break. This time, the prestigious award has been received by a social campaign for the protection of journalists, created by the communication agencies Publicis Latvia and Publicis Mexico.
The campaign, known by its hashtag #StillSpeakingUp / #SeguimosHablando, was launched by Publicis Mexico to help non-profit non-governmental organization Propuesta Civica to protect journalists who investigate and publish the crimes of drug cartels. In 2019, with the support of the social network Twitter, they made the profiles of four killed journalists available to other journalists so that they could continue their work in a safer way without revealing their identities.
In 2020, the Publicis Latvia team came up with the idea to continue the campaign by "reviving" one of the killed journalists Javier Valdez in a special video addressed to the Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. The video was made by the Publicis Latvia team, using deepfake computer technologies, processing hours of audio and video materials, recorded while Javier Valdez was still with us. In this video, the digitally revived Valdez called on the government to protect journalists. The Publicis Mexico team worked with the journalist's family, the media and influencers, and submitted the campaign petition to the government.
The campaign case study video can be seen here:
