Campaign: Graphology

To mark International Human Rights Day on 10 December 2009, Amnesty International asked JWT Barcelona to create an event to petition the presidents of China and the US to support international treaties protecting human rights. The agency created a compelling campaign that focused on the power of the signature.

In the run-up to 10 December, JWT created print ads and viral videos to encourage people to gather in one of Barcelona’s most popular squares to send a message to the leaders. The ads highlighted that a signature is more than just a scrawl on a page, it reveals a lot about a person both when it is analysed by a graphologist, but more importantly when you look at how people choose to use it.

Amnesty set up two giant canvases with the outlines of the signatures of presidents Barack Obama and Hu Jintao. People were encouraged to sign their names to fill the signatures of the two leaders on the canvases, which were then sent to the United Nations headquarters, home of the Declaration of Human Rights. Participants also signed postcards which were sent directly to the American and Chinese leaders. Several graphologists attended the event to analyse people’s signatures.

The pro bono campaign collected almost 15,000 signatures.