AIDS is a preventable and treatable disease, yet it kills more young people than any other disease, making 2019 one of the most critical years in the fight to end AIDS. To galvanize communities around the AIDS fight and creatively communicate the urgency and impact of The Global Fund Replenishment Conference, (RED) took the fight to the streets and partnered with the Museum of the Street, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Merck/MSD and The ONE Campaign to create PAINT (RED) SAVE LIVES. The campaign centered on world-class street artists creating physical murals in key global markets and launched digital artwork across social media platforms, allowing people all over the world to take part. Every engagement with the campaign served as a sign of global support for the Replenishment and a reminder to world leaders that millions of people care about ending AIDS.
Objectives:
- To enlist the creativity of the world’s leading street artists to bring real heat and awareness to the AIDS fight through visually engaging work, thematically linked to the mission of (RED) and the global fight to end this disease.
- Empower people around the world to engage and share the campaign, in person at the murals, and through exciting social media activations.
- Generate 10M social media engagements around the campaign as a show of support for the fight.
- Earlier in 2019, (RED) worked with a third-party field research group to test the resonance of HIV/AIDS impact and urgency messaging in select key markets. The results underlined the need for a variety of messaging to engage the broadest possible audience, particularly in the social space. Based on these insights, (RED)’s creative brief to artists urged them to find the most striking, visually arresting way to convey a range of messaging to educate and engage people.
- With pro-bono curation by Scott Lawin, founder, The Museum of the Street (MoTS), (RED) would recruit a powerful collective of high-profile street artists from around the world to support this first-of-its-kind campaign. Among others, the artists included Ron English, WK, Shepard Fairey, Bisco Smith, Karabo Poppy Moletsane, and more.
- To secure prime locations for mural installations in key cities, (RED) collaborated with MoTS, partners and with local government offices.
- To create and distribute impactful, social-first campaign content across multiple platforms, (RED) partnered with Chopemdown Films to create 12 short films featuring the artists. To spread the message even further and tap new audiences in the digital space, (RED) collaborated with the Happn Dating App and Captivate Network on pro-bono ad placement encouraging their audiences to visit and interact with the art.
- (RED) created a dedicated landing page on RED.org to showcase the artists and their campaign art, including an interactive map that allowed users to find murals near them and encourage sharing on social media via the #paintRED hashtag. The landing page also included a Global Fund petition in partnership with (RED)’s sister organization, The ONE Campaign.
- In collaboration with five of the street artists and through a long-term relationship with Snapchat, (RED) released five AR Lenses which featured interactive ‘digital murals’ of the street art, empowering anyone, anywhere, to share, show and engage with the art in an effort to raise awareness for the AIDS fight.
- Across all key social platforms, (RED) created and shared custom content to tell a story and bring further heat to the fight.
- With Merck’s support of PAINT (RED) SAVES LIVES, (RED) was able to expand the program, reach more consumers and more effectively communicate the urgency and impact of the Replenishment conference.
- Additional activities included a (RED) street art auction on Artsy, as well as PAINT (RED) SAVE LIVES-branded merchandise on RED.org.
- The campaign officially kicked off on September 18th in Washington, D.C. with a large format ‘SAVE LIVES’ installation by Trevor & Cosmo, on the Great Lawn on Capitol Hill. This piece was the first of 32 talented street artists from around the world, including Add Fuel, Bisco Smith, BRUSK, DALeast, Faile, Faith XLVII, Hera, HOW & NOSM, Ludo, Olek, Ron English, Shepard Fairey, Stephen Powers, and WK, all creating a steady drumbeat of more than 45 murals and installations across New York, Berlin, London, Paris, Jersey City, Accra, Malmo, Cape Town, New Delhi, Horsens, Nairobi, Manila, Lima, Ho Chi Minh City, Dakar, Oslo, all culminating in Lyon, France on October 10th.
- The campaign drove 35 million social media engagements across (RED), street artist and partner channels, far surpassing our goal of 10 million engagements.
- Placement on Snapchat’s nationally sponsored lens spot bolstered (RED)’s efforts, with the five lenses receiving 27 million total impressions in 24 hours. The lens included a swipe up to Red.org/paint, our most highly trafficked campaign page to date. During the campaign, (RED) gained 14,000 new followers on social media and reached a new milestone on Instagram - 400,000 total followers.
Video for PAINT (RED) SAVE LIVES: The First Global Street Art Campaign To End AIDS
