Public Relations: Powerful enough to end a war - by Stanley Hurwitz

Stanley Hurwitz, Creative Communications

In case you didn’t know, PR is powerful. Here’s the story of how, perhaps for the first time in history, a public relations campaign helped to end a war.

Over the last 50 years, a battle between the Colombian government and the Marxist rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) resulted in the death of 220,000 people and displaced 7 million others. In 2016, after six years of negotiations and an agreement to allow FARC to form a political party, the war was over (well, sort of). Both sides came to an agreement without a shot fired. 7,000 rebels were convinced to drop their weapons, stop destroying their country and “come home.”

But how did the government and the rebels get to that point? Ad/PR executive and Colombian native Jose Miguel Sokolof created campaigns to persuade FARC guerrillas to demobilize using the promise of “freedom” from guerrilla life in Colombia’s jungles. Around Christmas 2010, Sokolof’s team entered the jungle by helicopter (at great personal risk) and set up holiday trees with banners that read: “If Christmas can come to the jungle, you can come home. Demobilize.” It resulted in a spike in rebel demobilizations. The next year, they floated hundreds of glowing plastic balls with similar messages down the rivers in FARC territory, and the following year, they dropped lighted stars with messages of peace, encouraging defectors to come home.

So many rebels defected and went home, that negotiators announced a deal to end the conflict in August 2016. However, a referendum to ratify the deal in October lost 50.2% to 49.8%. Later the government and FARC signed a revised peace deal, approved by Congress in late November, marking an end to the conflict. FARC became a political party and got 10 seats in the Congress. Rebels put down their weapons and got no jail time if they agreed to compensate their victims by undertaking development work in areas they had destroyed.

While FARC leaders did not formally campaign, the rebels made a major last-minute public relations push to win support. Rebel commanders met with the families of victims at the sites of notorious FARC massacres, seeking forgiveness. Although President Juan Manuel Santos received the Nobel Peace Prize and  today, while it’s peaceful in former hot spots, it’s estimated that half the rebels have not accepted the treaty. They don’t want to give up $700 million a year – revenue from the production of coca base, the first stage in the manufacturing of cocaine. Holdout FARC groups remain among the biggest players in the world cocaine trade. But the group’s shootings and terrorist activities have dramatically decreased.

If a creative PR pro can do so much to end a war, imagine what one can do to help you win the battle to build buzz, branding, and your bottom line.

Stanley Hurwitz is principal of  Creative Communications, Stoughton, Mass.