2025 San Francisco/BaY Area AAF American Advertising Awards
Social Media Campaign
Copywriting
Peace one Day
Messages of Peace
Messages of Peace is a social first campaign that uses familiar meme formats to make peace feel obvious, simple, and easy to talk about. Instead of heavy activism or emotional appeals, the campaign uses humor and casual language to reach new audiences on the platforms they already scroll every day. By borrowing the recognisable Guy With a Sign format and mixing it with pop culture memes, Peace One Day becomes part of everyday online conversation rather than a message people avoid.
Problem?
Peace One Day wanted to reach people outside the usual activism bubble and create new awareness for their annual global day of ceasefire. Conflict dominates headlines and serious peace messaging often feels overwhelming or hopeless, which makes younger social media users scroll past it.
Traditional PSA style advertising comes across as heavy and preachy instead of shareable. Peace One Day needed a way to make peace feel simple, approachable, and easy to talk about. The challenge was to turn something as massive as world peace into a message that everyday social media users would pause for, enjoy, and repost without pressure.
Solution
The answer was to speak the internet’s native language, memes. Messages of Peace used the familiar Guy With a Sign format and combined it with light humor to deliver simple reminders that peace is not a complicated dream, it is something we all want. The tone stayed casual, friendly, and human, avoiding the heaviness that usually surrounds peace campaigns.
Instagram received a series of static sign posts that presented obvious truths about peace, and Facebook received a meme format that used recognisable characters from pop culture, such as Stranger Things. Everything was created manually, with clean comps and simple typography, and the system was designed to be modular so the format can be expanded with new signs, characters, and cultural moments.
Insights
People are desensitized to traditional advertising and overly serious activism. Memes feel honest, light, and extremely shareable. When peace is presented through humor and simplicity, it becomes less intimidating and far more relatable.
Memes spread faster than PSAs because they feel like something a friend would share rather than something a brand is pushing. Since the idea of peace is already universal, making it casual and slightly playful helps people engage with it instead of avoiding it.
Process
The campaign relied on familiarity and simplicity. Every meme and sign image was manually comped using real formats that people interact with every day. The process included studying existing meme pages, matching text placement, and keeping the design intentionally simple to maintain the raw and relatable feeling.
The goal was not perfect polish, the goal was authenticity. By using existing cultural templates and redirecting them toward positive messaging, the campaign demonstrated that peace can be talked about in an everyday way. When the message feels human and friendly, it becomes easier to share.
