Brief (PR):
In 2017, Europe is concerned by a major immigration crisis, and when it comes to refugees, people and especially medias speak about data, about statistics, about immigration waves, even about terrorism, but never about humans. They are not considered as men and women anymore, they are refugees.
How Liberation, as a progressive media, becomes the catalyst of a societal change about refugees issue in Europe, 50 days before French presidential elections?



Solution/Strategy:
When it comes to refugees, we speak about data, statistics, immigration, even terrorism, but never about humans. Medias are one of the major responsible of this phenomenon.
The best way to turn things around was to use one of these medias in an unexpected way to catch people’s attention and switch their perception on this issue.
By giving the whole paper for 1 day we wanted to highlight that beyond figures, they are people with opinions and knowledges. So they had the stage directly for a change


Outcome/Results (PR):
- 21 refugees of 10 nationalities
- +35% of sales on this specific edition compared to usual days.
- 100k papers were printed and the digital edition was seen 4 million times
- Almost every major French medias (TV, Radio, Press) covered the news and interviewed authors
- International media supported the initiative
- Even French President François Hollande tweeted about it
- 3 refugees were invited to meet him at Elysee
- On Twitter #LibéDesRéfugiés was seen by 126 million people the first 24 hours


Insights:
Refugees perceived as objects of compassion, objects of rejection, objects of suspicion or objects of solidarity. But always: objects. We know little of these refugees about whom we talk so much. Most often, we ignore their pain and their joy, their ideas and their hopes, their history and their goal. They are reduced to a category: “migrants” or “refugees”.

Laurent Joffrin (Publisher and Executive Director of Liberation)




Location/Platform (PR):
Every day, 100k papers are printed. It is distributed all over France in kiosks, press shops, bars, Air France planes, to the 30K daily subscribers, and in more than 25 countries in the world.
A digital version is also sold online, seen by 4 million French people every day.
The target audience of the newspaper mostly belongs to the social democrat party, but the purpose of this special edition was to break ideological barriers and speak to every French people, 50 days before French elections