The Unfinished Votes
Change the Ref
Issue 57 | December 2020
Agency
McCann Health NY/Change the Ref
Creative Team
Global Chief Creative Officer Matt Eastwood Chief Creative Officer NY June Laffey Executive Creative Director Tim Jones Group Creative Director/ Copywriter Josh Grossberg Creative Director/Art Director Fabio Rodrigues Associate Creative Director/Designer Felipe Leite
Production Team
Director of Integrated Production Ed Zazzera Producer Eva Pipa Senior Project Manager Regine LeConte Production Company The Colony
Other Credits
Group Account Supervisor Warren Wyatt
Date
September 2020
Background
After the tragic shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in 2018, Manuel and Patricia Oliver launched Change the Ref in memory of their son Joaquin and his 16 peers who senselessly lost their lives.
Idea
With the 2020 Presidential election looming, Change the Ref launched an initiative to encourage young people to cast their vote. “The Unfinished Votes” leveraged AI technology to bring Joaquin back to life digitally so he could ask people to “finish” the vote he was never able to cast himself, as this would have marked Joaquin’s first vote in a presidential election. In the launch film for the campaign, Manuel and Patricia, alongside their late son, set out to recruit 40,000 voters to replace the votes of the 40,000 people who lose their lives to gun violence each year in the USA.
Our Thoughts
At the time of writing, 38,381 people in America have died from guns in 2020. Joe Biden is set to enter the White House. In 1994 he secured a 10-year ban on assault weapons, which he has pledged to renew.
He has plans for a buy-back scheme so people can return their weapons safely to the government and he plans to extend background checks on people buying firearms. From this side of the world, it looks as if every vote this campaign may have won him was a vote for common sense.