Human Rights Campaign Targets Sports Fans

by Robyn Wexler

The commercial was part of Amnesty's worldwide campaign to publicize the 50th anniversary of the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In doing so, Amnesty managed to appear in one of the world's largest advertising venues, reaching 61 million viewers.

"It was one of the highlights of my career," said Amnesty's Advertising and Promotions Director Helen Garrett.

While commercials aired during such coveted time slots are infamous for their elaborate production and high costs, how does a non-profit in the business of defending human rights compete with the likes of Coca Cola and General Motors? The ad, itself, gave no explanation as to the forces behind its surprise appearance on one of television's most expensive spots. The unnamed sponsor of this striking public service announcement, it turns out, is Amnesty's long-time friend, Reebok.

The Reebok-Amnesty partnership is nothing new. Ten years ago, the two groups joined forces when Reebok sponsored the Peter Gabriel and Sting led international concert tour, Human Rights Now!, marking the Declaration's 40th anniversary.

For this year's golden anniversary, however, Reebok decided it was time to bridge human rights with a new audience. As Sharon Cohen, vice-president of corporate affairs at Reebok, explains: "Human rights and music have gotten together; there is a history with that. We thought the idea of human rights and sports would be something to create another audience. With the basketball playoffs, we thought we could achieve another leap forward."

Reebok had already purchased the ad time and decided to give a piece of it to Amnesty. This was no small gift -- the donated time (four 60 second spots on NBC and six 30 second spots on TNT) was worth more than $1 million. Perhaps most striking, however, was that fact that the ads didn't even mention Reebok's name.

"Public Service Announcements are normally at the mercy of bad time spots and a lot of randomness. We hope this will be the beginning of linking human rights with sports and sports players. [No sports stars were featured in the ad.]

"Organizations like Amnesty need more support so they can generate greater awareness. Human rights are hard to grasp; there are so many principles and they're extremely broad. It can seem impossible to do. We wanted to give a boost to human rights, the Declaration, Amnesty, and the political prisoners. Besides, it's nice to get out of business as usual -- and basketball," explained Cohen.

In honor of the 50th anniversary, Amnesty is working to gather 5 million signatures over the course of a year, pledging support for the principles of the Declaration. The list of names will be collected into "the world's largest book" and presented to the UN in Paris, the original adoption site of the Declaration, on December 10, 1998 -- the very day of the 50th anniversary.

In the week after the ad was aired, Amnesty received more than 3,750 calls to its 800 number. While 3 million pledge cards have been signed worldwide, only 150,000 of those have come in from the US -- and that's after the $1 million television spot! Now a little under halfway through the campaign, Amnesty appears to be well on its way to 5 million.

Signers already include: Nobel Peace Prize recipients, Princes and Presidents (including Clinton), religious leaders, celebrities, and quite recently, the Dalai Lama.