On Friday 13 September, The Dutch government cancelled summer music festivals being afraid of another spike in coronavirus infections, despite the promise they made at the beginning of summer. They forgot that attending festivals was a reason for the majority of people to get fully vaccinated in the first place.
Other large events, such as the Formula1 in Zandvoort were allowed to go ahead. The already ravaged events sector pushed back.
The Evenementenbranch festival body called Boomerang a couple of hours before Mark Rutte would break the news, and they asked us to come up with the concept that would ignite people for a peaceful protest and address the issue not being heard.
So we called an emergency brainstorm meeting and cracked on the concept.
I proposed the #UnMuteUs name of the protest, the hashtag, the dynamic logo that can work in different colours.
The concept and logo were so simple and clear that even people could recreate it themselves. That was the idea.
Later in the evening, this idea we developed in a few hours became a viral social campaign and transformed into the biggest demonstration in the Netherlands. Six marches were organized through six major Dutch cities. Over 500,000 people attended… and the industry signed a petition forcing the government to take notice.
A single thought of #UnMuteUs became the most used hashtag and the biggest movement Netherlands has ever seen. That was not a fake, not a case made for awards, this idea was developed for good, for people to be heard and channel the aggressive energy in a positive peaceful way.
