Enhancing public diplomacy

Beginning in 2017, more than one million Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious groups were detained and imprisoned by the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). These people have been subjected to genocide and crimes against humanity and have faced intense surveillance, religious restrictions, forced labor, “re-education” camps, and other human rights abuses. In support of the U.S. government’s broader Indo-Pacific Strategy, our team created a public diplomacy campaign to educate the European public about the human, economic, and cultural impacts of the PRC’s actions. The objective of the campaign was to garner long-term public support across allied nations for U.S. policy and human rights priorities in the region.

We developed a strategy grounded in qualitative research insights that amplified voices, messages, and content that had already found purchase in the public consciousness in target countries. This strategy had a particular focus on uplifting Uyghur voices and their own stories. Navigating numerous constraints and sensitivities, our approach focused on paid promotion of three key pillars of awareness-centric content:

Throughout the campaign, we evaluated performance against our core objectives, including ad placements and the foundational content they promoted.