ROTHCO Scoops Three Pencils for JFK Unsilenced at D&AD

Last night, ROTHCO, part of Accenture Interactive scooped three D&AD pencils for its AI-led campaign for The Times / News UK & Ireland, ‘JFK Unsilenced’.

The campaign was awarded Wood Pencils in the Sound Design & Use of Music for Websites & Digital Design and Use of Branded Audio Content categories and a Graphite Pencil in the Sound Design for Film Advertising category.

The campaign used specialist AI technology to create the speech the 35th US president was meant to make in Dallas on the day he was assassinated - The Dallas Trade Mart speech.

The film generated over 4.5K registrations to The Times & The Sunday Times, as well as a 51 million Twitter reach and one billion media impressions globally. Every one of The Times’ competitors covered the campaign including The Guardian, Daily Mail, The Sun, The Daily Mirror, The New York Post, The Washington Post, The Independent, The Evening Standard and hundreds more.

Since its launch the breakthrough audio technique applied in the campaign has been adopted by companies around the world to help ALS suffers re-find their voice.

Executive Creative Director at ROTHCO, part of Accenture Interactive, Alan Kelly comments: “We’re thrilled to have this work recognised by the judges at D&AD. Everyone involved gave it their all on this project including Cereproc and Screen Scene. We’re proud to see it has had such a profound impact.”

JFK Unsilenced has also been nominated as a finalist in several categories at The One Show 2018, results to be announced mid-May.