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Case · CEAR · 2019

El Otro Sonido del Mar

Awareness campaign about the refugee crisis that transformed testimonies from refugees into musical compositions using the sounds of their journeys. Awarded at Cannes Lions, El Sol and Caples.

Client El Otro Sonido del MarAgency/Studio See case
[ 01 ] Awards
🏆 Cannes Lions Bronze — Innovation in Audio🏆 El Sol — Silver🏆 El Sol — Bronze🏆 Caples Awards — Bronze
[ 02 ] Context

The problem of overexposure

By 2019 the refugee crisis had been in the media for years. Images of boats, refugee camps and casualty figures had saturated audiences to the point where emotional response was almost zero. CEAR needed a campaign that broke through that collective numbness and reconnected people with the humans behind the phenomenon.

The challenge wasn't to inform — everyone knew the crisis existed — but to make people feel. And to do it in a way that didn't repeat the same visual resources the public had already learned to ignore.

[ 03 ] The idea

Turn the journey into music

The insight was simple and powerful: every refugee carries the sounds of their journey. The sound of water. Of footsteps on dry land. Of others in the same boat. Of the shore on arrival. The campaign took those sounds — recorded from real testimonies of people who had crossed the Mediterranean — and converted them into musical compositions unique to each person's journey.

In an environment saturated with images, the bet on audio was the way to reach where images no longer could.

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