Two weeks ago, I showed a new advertisement for Amnesty International, dedicated to the Olympic Games in Beijing. Since then, the ads have gone around the world, plus some other ones, as shown above.

Now, Amnesty is crawling back. From their website:

Amnesty International would like to make clear that it was not involved in the dissemination of a series of images that have been circulating on the web in relation to the Beijing Olympics.

The ads were made by French agency TBWA\Paris, but were rejected by Amnesty as being too provocative. So, how did they end up on the web? Simple: the agency was so proud of the ads that they wanted to submit them for the famous Lions de Cannes award contest. Amnesty agreed, TBWA won, and the ads started their journey across the world.

As far as I can see, there are two possibilities. Either TBWA and Amnesty were extremely naive in underestimating the power of the Internet. Or the whole thing was set up by the two, in order to get a message across without having to take responsibility for it.

What do you think?