The ‘Message in Bottle’ campaign was a response to the Australian Federal Government’s proposed changes to refugee and asylum seeker law in 2006, that would undermine Australia’s international human rights obligations.
The human rights defender Amnesty took on this issue and gave us a brief to create an online campaign that would register 10,000 signatures against proposed refugee legislation amendments (which were ultimately defeated).
We played with the concept of an ‘online petition’ and the result was a viral campaign allowing people to create their own bottle which they could forward to friends inviting them to add their name or create their own bottle too. In response, in only 11 days more than 25,000 Australians joined in voicing their concerns by 27,000 forwarded campaign emails and over 1,400 personal bottles holding up to 140 names each. A giant bottle with the names within it was then presented to the media.