A guerilla war has ravaged Colombia for more than half a century. Most of Colombia’s budget has gone to the military.

You might remember Lowe SSP3’s (now MullenLowe) Rivers of Light campaign that convinced young guerilla fighters to come out of the jungle and home to their loved ones for Christmas – in the hope that love would keep them there. It won the only D&AD Black Pencil in 2012.

On March 24 2016, a peace treaty was to be signed between the Colombian government and FARC (The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—People’s Army)…

…a milestone in the country’s history.

To make its mark and rewrite Colombia’s future, the media had to get on board.

So McCann Worldgroup Colombia developed a concept for the Ministry of Education to recycle fired bullets into pens to be distributed to the country’s leadership.

The Ministry of Education presented the first of these “bullet pens” as Christmas gifts to Colombia’s president, other federal government ministers, scholars, intelligentsia, journalists, and key media outlets.

Each of the pens came with the message, “Bullets wrote our past. Education, our future,” along with the request that they be used to write proposals on building Colombia’s future.

The Bullets to Pens peace project includes a website on which all the proposals written by Colombia’s leaders with the bullet pens will be displayed. The originals of those proposals will be sold in auction with the money to be given as scholarships to the orphans of the heroes killed during the war.

Credits:

Digital Manager: Daniel Vergara

3D Production 3D: Life & Salvación

PR Agency: Corporativa