A recent campaign initiated by the South African Apartheid Museum promises to bring high results in South Africa and beyond. It is a viral video campaign, with an extraordinary marketing strategy, that tries to fight the apathy average South Africans have towards their history and the oppression they experienced under Apartheid. The brilliant minds behind this initiative interviewed various young people asking them questions about their country and the global pop culture. Sadly, young South Africans know a lot about Britney Spears, Oprah, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, David Beckham but nothing about chief Albert Luthuli, Joe Slovo or Steve Biko.

As the folks behind the viral campaign say “A History forgotten is a history lost”. If you’re in South Africa and you don’t know anything about the heroes that facilitated the peaceful transition to democracy in the country, or who died for South Africans to ripe the benefits of freedom and democracy, go to the Apartheid Museum in Johnannesburg. “Make the time.”

According to the guys from Creative Roots, the company that is responsible for this campaign,

The Apartheid Museum exists as a monument to the rise and fall of apartheid. It chronicles a history we should forgive, but in so doing, never forget. Unfortunately, the museum is struggling to attract South Africans and particularly younger South Africans. So they asked us (TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris) for an advertising campaign to help get people interested in visiting the museum.

We had a suspicion that a lack of interest in the Museum was part of a larger societal problem. A mere sixteen years after the fall of Apartheid, our history and the lessons it can teach us were being systematically forgotten.  So we decided to expose the reality. And start a conversation. After all, the most important step in addressing a problem is knowing that there is one. So we took to the streets and interviewed our youth directly. We simply asked them to identify a series of famous people. First popular culture icons and lastly a famous anti-apartheid leader.
Our suspicion turned to reality. Over 86% of the people interviewed easily recognised the popular figures and failed to identify the South African anti-apartheid leader.

(via AfricanLoft.com)