Fighting words
Free Tibet
Brand language
Finding a voice for the most oppressed people on earth.
What we did
Positioning
Messaging
Tone of voice
Once a cause célèbre, China’s atrocities in Tibet have somewhat dropped off the news agenda. Yet, according to Human Rights Watch, Tibet was the least free nation on earth in 2021, and things have only become worse.
Free Tibet is non-profit, non-governmental organisation fighting to give Tibetans a voice. They approached us to help them recapture some of the dynamism and outrage that made them such a popular cause in the 1990s.
“I love it. I just love it. In fact, I’m slightly annoyed I didn’t come up with it.”
Will Hoyles, head of communications
So our positioning and messaging explored ways to turn these challenges into opportunities, focusing on ideas like the power of bearing witness, the importance of memory and turning a lack of proof points into a potent proof point of its own.
Then our tone of voice guidelines provided the tools to help turn anger into action, to be constructively confrontational, and to find (and inspire) hope in even the bleakest situations.
Anger has a part to play. But on its own, it’s not enough. There has to be a purpose, there has to be a plan. And most of all, there has to be hope. Because if a cause is hopeless, it’s pointless.
But hope is hard to come by in the story of Tibet. And, in the world’s most sophisticated police state, very little of that story even makes it across the border.
