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Project Everyone enlists digital signage for 'world's largest ever advertising campaign'

In what organizers hope to be 'the world's largest ever advertising campaign,' out-of-home advertisers and communications agencies around the globe marshaled assets for Project Everyone, aiming to share the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals with 7 billion people over seven days.

October 6, 2015 by Christopher Hall — w, t

In what organizers hope to be "the world's largest ever advertising campaign," out-of-home advertisers and communications agencies around the globe marshaled their efforts and assets for Project Everyone — which aims to share the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals with 7 billion people over seven days using powerful imagery and copy across an extensive range of platforms.

The global campaign, which launched Sept. 26, was to see at least 125 partners participating in displaying ads that will be seen in 450 cities across 28 different countries, according to an announcement from one of the project's participants and organizers, Posterscope, the global out-of-home communications agency and location expert.

Project Everyone, the brainchild of filmmaker and Comic Relief founder Richard Curtis, saw participation from a wide spectrum of media partners, ranging from ABC, Adspace Networks, Blue 449, Branded Cities, City Outdoor, Clear Channel Outdoor, Elevision Media, Lamar Advertising, Ocean Outdoor, Orange Barrel Media, Outfront Media and Vector Media — among many others — to supply advertising space to display the advertisements, which have been designed by Richard Curtis himself, and raise awareness of the initiative.

The campaign's ads were showcased in busy central locations such as Piccadilly Circus in London, Swanston Street in Melbourne, Bukit Bintang in Kuala Lumpur and Times Square in New York, where the campaign kicked off, according to Posterscope.

Project Everyone founder Richard Curtis said, "The best chance of the U.N.'s global goals being met is if everyone is aware of them, and that's where Project Everyone comes in, along with the support of its many partners. I have been overwhelmed by the response of brands, consumers and institutions alike to this initiative. Posterscope has been instrumental with getting out-of-home media owners on board to help us get our messages across, to really raise public awareness of the issue at hand. With their help, we have secured sites in the busiest areas of key cities around the world to visualize the global goals and what Project Everyone stands for."

At the U.N. Headquarters in New York City last month, almost 200 world leaders met to adopt a series of ambitious targets to end extreme poverty, fight inequalities and tackle climate change for everyone by 2030. The Global Goals campaign is a global collaborative effort to ensure that these goals are world famous and that they are successfully acted upon. In order to make the goals famous, Project Everyone was on a mission to get the goals to 7 billion people in the seven days after they were adopted, according to the announcement.

"If we don't act today, our world and our lives will remain under threat," Unilever Pakistan Ltd. Chairman and CEO Ehsan Malik said in a press conference announcing his firm's participation in the project, according to The (Pakistan) Express Tribune. "The [Sustainable Development Goals] are aimed at improving lives, which is also the objective behind Unilever products."

And the campaign generated engagement around the world, judging by social media:

@Posterscope @blue_449 Here's #GlobalGoals catching eyes on Gatwick #DOOH #ProjectEveryone http://t.co/UeoVfwAxAf pic.twitter.com/gywKJMyM2k

— Eye Airports (@EyeAirports) October 2, 2015

Blue 449 Chairman Phil Georgiadis said of his company's involvement: "There is no better an opportunity than Project Everyone to demonstrate the power of open source collaboration. Posterscope has secured through their media owner partners an extraordinary level of exposure for the Global Goals and in the process reminded us all of the broadcast impact of the Outdoor Medium."

Posterscope Netherlands even posted a quick YouTube clip of the campaign live:

"It is a great opportunity to be involved in an initiative like Project Everyone," Posterscope Global CEO Annie Rickard said in the announcement. "We are delighted to be able to capitalize on our media network and connections to help raise awareness around the issues at hand and hopefully, slowly but surely, change the way we live and the world we live in."

Posterscope Australia Managing Director Joe Copley told AdNews that almost 1,000 sites in six cities in Australia were secured thanks to pro bono space donated by APN Outdoor, Adshel, QMS, JCDecaux, Val Morgan Outdoor and Executive Channel Network.

Craig Page-Lee, MD for Posterscope South Africa, told TheMarketingSite.com that, "It is with great pride that Posterscope South Africa is able to support this important global initiative by leveraging off our media owner partnerships, thereby driving heightened awareness of the issues at stake. I thank the team for ensuring that our key media partners have committed to this campaign."

The founding team of Project Everyone includes Aviva, Getty Images, Pearson, Standard Chartered and Unilever, along with action/2015, Akshaya Patra, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Global Citizen, Google, Huffington Post, ONE, Penguin Random House, Reliance Group, Save the Children, SAWA, UNDP, the U.N. Foundation, UNICEF, Universal South Africa, Virgin, Vodafone Foundation, WeTransfer and Wikipedia.

Click here to see a slide show of images from the campaign.

(Cover image courtesy of Posterscope USA.)

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