This first chapter refers to the moment when Snowden met Laura Poitras and other journalists in Honk Kong. Soon after this meeting, the first stories begin to appears in the Guardian, exposing the NSA and the U.S government, but also many governments around the world, implicated as well in this illegal surveillance system. It was a tremendous choc , the new spread all over the world and people from every part of the globe were speaking about this massive invasion of privacy.
The movie campaign for the movie wanted to recreate this moment and shocked people again, three years after the revelations, for the movie's purpose.
THE EXPOSURE
A digital billboard spying on pedestrians
The campaign agency Denstubos, worked with advertising company Cieslok Media to install a security camera that would stream real-time video to one of its billboards in famous square of Toronto, Dundas Square. Its mission was to track and follow pedestrians from afar while live streaming the footage onto this giant video board. In addition to that, animation like “tracking” and “target detected” were appearing over footage of real people there, for more dramatic effects. Indeed, the goal of this communication operation was to make people react by making them feel uncomfortable with the idea of a “Big Brother” state.
“I would be gobsmacked if any other client or company wanted to film customers and put them on a screen. Because of the nature of the message with Snowden, it was right … What Snowden has been trying to do, we wanted to make people feel it. You can read about it, but until you actually feel it you don’t internalize it – you intellectualize it. When people saw themselves [on the billboard] they got spooked … It feels very intrusive to people.”
Jon Freir, Vice President, Creative, DentsuBos.
Using shock as a promotion tool
When the unsuspecting targets saw themselves on the big screen, their shocked reactions created all the drama needed to drive home the film’s point.Their reactions were very interesting.
“What Snowden did was bring a terrifying question to light, “Who’s watching us? Where? When?” We wanted to show people what that means to them in a very real way.”
Jon Freir, Vice President, Creative, DentsuBos.
"Some felt violated, some terrified, and some even praised it as the creepiest thing ever. Funnily, almost all looked around to see if there were other cameras spying on them. Which in itself is very telling." Jon Freir, Vice President, Creative, DentsuBos.
The operation was a success. First of all because it accomplished something that has not yet been attempted before : using technology in a movie campaign to spy on people on the streets. The main point of this choice was to make people react and by doing so, make them realize that they are being watched all the time through modern technology. Indeed, even if we all know that our privacy is being compromised, it still abstract for a lot of people. The movie campaign added reality to this issue, with this giant billboard which represents litteraly our lack of privacy.
This campaign emphasizes the very same privacy questions and concerns that the film “Snowden” brings to light. It is a perfect marriage of message and medium. The campaign also comes at a time when people’s trust in advertising is in question, largely because of the marketing practice of tracking people’s behaviour online in order to deliver “relevant” ads to them. People are going to remember this communication operation, because of the shock they felt when they saw themselves walking on the big screen.