A voice for a jailed journalist

A small foundation was campaigning for the release of a journalist held on vague national security charges. It had passionate supporters and strong arguments, but its audience barely reached beyond the NGO world. A foreign ministers' summit was five months away.

We rebuilt the campaign's digital presence around the journalist's own reporting, letting his work make the case for him. We launched a campaign microsite with a petition, recruited journalists and press freedom groups in eight countries to share it, and ran a weekly countdown of days in detention across social channels.

In parallel, we identified the officials preparing the summit and made sure the case reached them through their own parliaments, press and embassies.

The foundation's audience grew from 4,000 to 61,000 in five months, and the petition gathered 38,000 signatures. Two foreign ministers raised the case publicly at the summit. The journalist was moved to house arrest six weeks later.