How Ogilvy Honduras Changed National Conversation - and Potentially Jurisdiction - with ‘Morning After Island’
Ogilvy Honduras came home from Cannes in June with the country’s first-ever Lion. In fact, the agency headed back to Central America with eight Lions, including three Golds and a coveted Glass for its conversation-altering campaign ‘Morning After Island’ for GEPAE (Grupo Estratégico para la Pastilla Anticonceptiva de Emergencia).
The aim of the campaign is to change the draconian 2009 law in Honduras that banned the sale, distribution - and severe penalties for using - emergency contraception pills. Since the ban, more than 350,000 underage Honduran girls have given birth. Morning After Island saw multiple women journey to international waters - outside Honduran jurisdiction - to stand on a small wooden platform to take a medication that is legal in every other country in Central America. What’s more, the campaign used the powerful imagery generated to shift the conversation in Honduras.
LBB’s Addison Capper chatted with Ogilvy Honduras’ Cesar Chinchilla, creative director, Jimena Andino, head of PR, and Eduardo Ching, CEO, to find out more about the campaign and creativity generally in their country.
LBB> Congrats on what was a really positive Cannes for you! Can you sum up how the festival went for Ogilvy Honduras?
Cesar> It’s been an unbelievable journey! We’ve been working so hard for so many years to get here, and to accomplish it with Morning After Island felt very gratifying. The entire team is filled with pride and satisfaction to have earned this recognition and doing it by fighting for Honduran women’s rights. We won the first Cannes Lions for Honduras along with seven others: three Gold, one Silver and three bronze and, most humbling of all, a gold in the Glass Lions. It’s positive proof of the value of bold, borderless creativity.
LBB> Morning After Island seems like such a brilliantly simple solution to a huge problem, but I imagine there was more to it than that. Can you tell us about the foundations of that project? What was the brief and what were the first steps for you as an agency?
Cesar> The brief was straightforward, as GEPAE (Grupo Estratégico para la Pastilla Anticonceptiva de Emergencia) is an activist group created with one purpose: repealing the ban on the morning after pill. For 12 years, they made little progress, which is unsurprising given everything stacked against them: no media budget for massive campaigns, no support from the private sector, zero institutionalised sexual health education, the constant spread of misinformation and taboo, resulting in their being called murderers and death cultists by certain media outlets and religious leaders whenever they dared ask for their basic human rights.
That said, keep in mind this is an idea over four years in the making. From the start, we knew it was going to be a difficult task - the traditional activist playbook had failed. To meet the challenge, our team went through several potential routes.
The journey began by knocking on the doors of several governmental and diplomatic offices, one-on-one lobbying with stakeholders, and meetings with GPAE allies. What we found was that locally, door after door was closed off to us. That’s what sparked the idea: any possible solution would require that we leave our home territory. Building the platform outside Honduran jurisdiction allowed women to take the pill without fear of prosecution, to raise their voices and be seen by the world without being silenced.
LBB> Can you give some more background to the laws that inspired this campaign? Why is the morning after pill still illegal in Honduras? Is it a common debate in public?
Jimena> 13 years ago, Honduras became the only country in Latin America to ban the morning after pill. Our country is one of the most conservative in the region, but even so, the act of banning a medication approved by the World Health Organisation represented a massive step backwards for women’s rights and wellbeing.
The results were as sad as they were predictable: since then, 330,000 underage girls have become mothers. Today, one out of every four Honduran women and girls will become pregnant before turning 18, half raped by the men closest to them.
The lack of public debate on the issue is largely fuelled by a lack of knowledge and active misinformation. Many Honduran women aren’t even aware of the pill. Many others have been convinced that taking it is the same as having an abortion, making it taboo to even bring up.
Certainly, the election of Honduras’ first female president sparked hope that we could finally break the misinformation and stigma caused by conservative authorities. This campaign has put president Xiomara Castro under a significant amount of pressure to take action. As a result, she has made a public commitment and taken concrete steps forward, including the formation of a new Ministry of Women and collaborating on a broad legislative proposal defending women’s sexual, reproductive and civil rights.
LBB> Tell me about the idea to create the 'island' - how did you navigate what would be deemed Honduran jurisdiction or not? What other factors did you need to keep top of mind?
Cesar> Thank you for the question, we hadn’t had the opportunity to talk about this before.
For the legal and technical issues, we quietly reached out to like-minded experts in nautical law and logistics. Turns out there are various different zones of jurisdiction, and it very much mattered where we decided to execute. Our primary concern was, of course, the safety and privacy of the women involved. So as you can imagine, factors such as the weather and the tides came into the equation as well. At the same time, we had to keep in mind that our ultimate goal was to generate change for the millions of Honduran women who couldn’t get out there, and for that, we needed powerful, striking imagery. We needed creativity that would move the world to help pressure our government into repealing the ban.
LBB> Obviously, it's not sustainable or a long-term solution for women to have to go to this small island. So, what are the long-term goals of this campaign?
Jimena> Simple: give Honduran women their reproductive rights back by having the ban repealed. That’s the ultimate long-term goal of this campaign. We’ve come a long way, but this is a long-lasting fight and neither our client nor ourselves will rest until we see it through.
LBB> What impact has this project had on the problem that you set out to solve?
Jimena> Honduran women are closer than ever to getting their rights back. Over 2 million signatures from around the globe, media coverage from over 15 countries - and most important of all, local media, community, and women putting pressure on our government.
Nothing demonstrates this more clearly, in my opinion, than the meeting with the president on International Women’s Day. For the first time ever, we earned our client a long-denied seat at the table. That day, GEPAE discussed the future of women's rights directly with the executive, reaching an agreement on several issues. Perhaps most importantly, finalising the creation of the Ministry of Women’s Rights, which will be a cornerstone to achieving our long-term goal.
LBB> I also wanted to ask you a bit more generally about creativity in Honduras. Generally, how do you feel about the level of advertising creativity in the country right now?
Eduardo> As an industry, we have worked over the years to push the boundaries of our craft forward, occasionally even over the objections of clients. Marketing and advertising in our country tends to play it safe, so our role as creative communicators is to challenge those traditional frameworks and convince our clients that moving out of their comfort zones will get them the results they want. As they’ve seen more proof of this over the years, brands are trusting us more and more with their budgets and briefs.
LBB> Central America in general performed really well at Cannes Lions this year. Why do you think that is?
Eduardo> Congrats to all our colleagues for the well-deserved recognition! This is the result of years of hard work by a passionate group of people, all of whom live in a region that’s fertile ground for creative thinking. In our countries, we have constant and unique challenges which aren’t often easily addressed by traditional problem-solving. We’re also a kind of cultural crossroads, with many influences coming together from around the world. That diversity of thought is an important factor. With all that, it was only a matter of time before we all had our moment, and you’ll certainly be seeing more of us in the coming years.
LBB> Which other projects from Ogilvy Honduras are you particularly proud of?
Eduardo> Since its founding 25 years ago, Ogilvy Honduras has been home to a unique combination of perfectionists, misfits, obsessives, and dreamers. That many years of creative output makes it hard to pick just one or two projects that we’re most proud of, but there are some recent highlights. Hotelbnb, for our client Hotel Honduras Maya, took an extremely old-fashioned brand and brought it into the 21st century. Your Fun Hurts, for PETA, took on the issue of animal abuse in circuses by making the audience viscerally uncomfortable. And then, there’s Ogilvy Talks. We have successfully run four editions of this national conference, bringing international speakers and brands to share their knowledge and expertise with our colleagues and aspiring professionals. We’re proud to say that we’ve helped shape the Honduran ad industry into what it is today.
LBB> Socially and economically, what are the trends shaping Honduran life right now and how are they impacting your work with your clients?
Cesar> As with everywhere else right now, top of mind for both consumers and businesses are rising costs and inflation. Culturally, we’re seeing a marked rise in conversation and activism around issues of women’s rights, LGBTQ+ discrimination, and environmental sustainability - particularly from the gen z demographic, whose faith in traditional institutions is on the decline. Like it or not, these and other issues do come up in our day-to-day work with clients, whether it’s in the context of stretching out budgets or finding that insight that will shape their next big campaign.
LBB> What does the rest of 2022 hold in store for Ogilvy Honduras?
Eduardo> As we said before, we’ll keep using the Morning After Island to generate noise and political pressure to repeal the ban. That said, we consider ourselves a forward-looking agency, and we won’t rest on our laurels. Our team is more motivated than ever to keep pushing the envelope, keep creating growth for our clients, and keep showing the world what our people are capable of.
