Reuters wanted to  bring consumers’ attention to the global issue of modern day slavery through a viral campaign titled “Unbox the Truth”. The tech industry makes regular use of minerals like tungsten, cobalt and gold but much of that intense, manual labor is performed by modern day slaves.

For this activation, a set of working headphones and a makeup palette were sent to a pair of YouTube “unboxers,” and their reactions were recorded and posted online.   In order to ensure that the materials used in our products were not participating in the supply chain that supports modern day slavery, everything was created from scratch in our shop in Brooklyn.  My team went through an intense phase of rapid design and prototyping to get the look and feel of the products and packaging just right, a process that can often take years in traditional manufacturing.  

The resulting videos had over 150,000 views in the first week.