Our task was to develop a global campaign for Al Jazeera English so it ran across the world in markets where there weren’t any major regulations or restrictions that hindered it being shared. However, we changed the parameters of traditional news network advertising by creating fresh branded online films to convey our message.

News networks in recent years have resorted to sensationalism, opinionated news anchors and selling the news as entertainment to keep ratings up. So more and more people are looking for alternative news sources, covering news that really matters. Al Jazeera is a news network that prides itself on doing just that. So we created a global campaign called Hear The Human Story.

At the heart of the campaign was We Are Fire, an eight-minute online documentary that told the real story of Champa Pal, a woman in India left destitute when her husband was murdered and her land stolen, until she joined the all-woman Gulabi Gang. The film was dedicated to that person and their journey with a deliberate emphasis on cinematic imagery married with a candid narrative to inform people in a fresh, entertaining way.

The campaign ran on TV and online, both on Al Jazeera’s global website and on their YouTube channel. We developed a series of click-through banners ran on a wide range of non-news sites that took people directly to the film. When it was voted as an editor’s pick on Vimeo it spread organically across movie and entertainment channels and was shared widely on social media.

The campaign reached more than 270 million people and it did more than just position a brand, it injected humanity back into the news and gave a voice to those that other networks often choose to ignore.

Al Jazeera English is a global news channel that wanted people to know that it goes beyond the headlines to find real human stories that matter. Packaging incredible human stories as branded content allowed us to create a bigger impact in countries around the world, by sharing stories that other news networks often ignore. Creating beautiful online films, allowed us to move the brand outside the strict guidelines of news reporting to reach millions more people in a far more powerful and entertaining way than your average news story.