It’s not often that an idea which has been conceptualised, actually turns into a reality, and then exceeds your expectations insofar as turning out better than you ever expected.
That is precisely what happened yesterday.
I can distinctly remember sitting in the boardroom at FoxP2 ad agency when their creative team pitched the ‘stone project’ to us. It was an ingenious way to illustrate the damage caused by non-essential, non-forensic people when entering a crime scene. How they intended to actually turn that concept into a reality was not important at that point. We were just blown away by the idea and its potential effectiveness.
Setting up through the night
For those of you who followed our Facebook and Twitter feeds yesterday at the Cape Town Train Station, you will have an idea of what I am talking about as you would have witnessed the fact that the ‘concept’ was transformed into a 8x6m large frame which quite literally spoke for itself!
Here is a lovely piece I found on the wesbite describing what transpired:
Ready to Roll at 6am
The disturbance begins..
“How do you educate people about the importance of leaving a crime scene alone? We all know the need to rubberneck, to get in all the gory details – we see it every time there’s an accident on the road. It’s human nature, no matter how undesirable.
And what about a crime scene? A crime scene where the most important thing to do is collect evidence and do everything possible to catch the criminal? That’s where the DNA Project comes in. With a great activation at Cape Town Station this morning, they showed directly how tampering with a crime scene can make it impossible to convict anyone.
The identity of the perpetrator has been lost..in this case, job well done!
The image started with a face created out of tiny pebbles, and as people walked over it, they began to degrade the image, until it couldn’t be made out any more. This physically shows people what happens when you don’t protect a crime scene.
It’s clever, it’s worth talking about and it creates a lot of buzz. That’s just the kind of advertising we like. And to top it all off – it does good at the same time. Thumbs up!”
I cannot wait to see the final video which has captured commuters walking over the box and disturbing the image using time-lapse video, which will be edited into a viral and played at high speed in under one minute as part of our awareness campaign – this will be sent over the social media network to spread awareness, so watch this space…
Carolyn Hancock explaining the importance of crime scene protection to commuters
Thanks to all the commuters who were so excited about what we were doing and who showed so much interest in what we had to say about crime scene awareness. Thanks to Cape Town Station who allowed us to use their fantastic new station to host this event. Thanks as always to our incredible funders, the Change a Life Trust for funding the hard costs required to set up and activate this project – we could not do any of this without your support.
And thank you to the most innovative, creative and committed team at FoxP2. It has been an honour to work with such a professional and dynamic group of people and we cannot thank you all enough for showing such a deep commitment to our cause. Your creative genius will quite literally save future lives.
with thanks
Vanessa Lynch and the DNA Project team
For more photos to see how the stone project evolved click here
Congratulations on displaying a brilliant artifact of how important the preservation of evidence is at a crime scene.The reason for extremely low prosecutions in South Africa in due to this
Well done to Carolyn Hancock and indeed, all those involved. What a brilliant concept!!