Advertising serves a lot of puposes. Most of the time it tries to convince us to drink this drink or use that shampoo. Or to show us that short-distance flights kill polar bears.
Now the Colombian governement has turned to advertising to get FARC guerilla fighters to defect. It is their latstest tool in the civil war that has been going on for 40 years. The campaign consists of radio and telvision ads broadcasted around football matches. FARC fighters are known to listen to and watch these games through their jungle satelite TV. The campaign also distributes flyers in the jungle where guerillas are known to hang around and there is a 24-hour hotline that they can call if they are interested.
The tv commercials tell the story of demobilarized soldiers and tries to show the others that there is a way out. The commercials also are produced quickly: when a fighter defects, a commercial based on his story is created. His old collegues might recognize the situation andrealize that they too can get out.
There are no concrete results yet but there seem to be more defections, including those of high-ranking soldiers. Another goal of the campaign is communication to the Colombian people, that the war is going in the right direction.
This campaign was created pro bono by the Colombian agency Lowe SSP3.
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