No More Broken Hearts
In the fall of 2009, the country of Colombia decided have a week long PR campaign in Washington, DC. The campaign involved the display of gigantic artistic hearts on public property all across DC. This was a campaign to essentially whitewash human rights crimes in Colombia, particularly against workers who only wish to organize a union, and to pressure the U.S. government into signing the pending “Free Trade” agreement with the country.
I and a group of friends came together to brainstorm what we might do counter the PR blitz and thus the No More Broken Hearts campaign was born. I volunteered to build the website along with a sister website that was satirical, but educational in nature. I built the site purely using HTML, PHP, and css and it eventually launched the weekend before the campaign.
Our counter campaign went beautifully and was picked up by dozens of media outlets including the largest daily in Colombia. I incorporated a listing of all our media hits in the sidebar of the main site and it served as a hugely successful resource hub for the media and all campaigners involved. I think this was a real testament to what a good website can do for a campaign and hope to do many more in the same vein in the future.