Stuck In The Elevator

Challenge

SOS Fauna is a nonprofit organization, which for more than 20 years fights against wild animal trafficking in Brazil – an illegal trade that drives billions of dollars in the country. The major difficulty of the institution is to educate people not to buy or breed these animals and this was the goal of the campaign.

Strategy

The main idea was to show, in a non-expected way, the cruelty that these animals suffer, since they are taken away from their natural habitat, living as prisoners for years.

The creative insight was to make some humans feel exactly the same as the animals when they are captured. To achieve this, we used elevators in commercial buildings. People would come down normally and suddenly the elevator stopped, frightening and getting everyone stuck. A few seconds later the elevator went back to normal and when the people left the elevator they received a flyer with a consciousness message “It is scary to be caged for a few seconds. Just imagine for a lifetime. Report animal abuse. SOS Fauna.”

Results

The video showing people reactions spread out through the Internet, reaching the following results:

• The number of volunteer submissions through the website rose 520% during the campaign.
• At the first week, the NPO website received over 35,000 unique visitors, more than twice they do in an entire year.
• CNN, TNT, Warner Channel, VH1, Sony, among other major TV channels spontaneously promoted the campaign spot.
• The Elevator film was the most tweeted video Worldwide during the campaigns first week, under the Nonprofits and Activism category.

The campaign was presented at prime time news show at one of the largest Brazilian broadcast TV, reaching over a 3MM audience.