Top honors for global PR campaign fighting Russian war propaganda

WASHINGTON, Oct. 17, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Global communications firm Red Flag has won the prestigious PR NEWS Platinum Award for best global public affairs campaign of the year.

The award presented last week at PR News' gala event in New York City recognizes Red Flag's pro bono media and digital public relations campaign on behalf of Call Russia, co-created by Not Perfect Vilnius and the 15 Min Group. The initiative established a database of 40 million Russian phone numbers and has thus far generated 175,000 personal phone calls by Russian-speaking volunteers seeking to counter Vladimir Putin's propaganda over the war in Ukraine.

A committee of expert judges applauded Red Flag for its media strategy and rapid worldwide deployment that earned more than 800 articles and news reports targeted to global media and markets with large Russian-speaking diasporas, including the United States, the UK, Germany, Poland, and Lithuania.

The global campaign aimed at activating volunteer callers was also boosted by dynamic social media tactics that secured shares from, among others, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, U.S. astronaut Scott Kelly, Atlantic writer and Ukraine expert Anne Applebaum, and senior Ukrainian government advisor Liubov Tsybulska.

Red Flag founder and CEO Karl Brophy commented:

"We immediately recognised that the concept of Call Russia, introduced to us by Paulius Senuta of Lithuania and his coalition, was brilliant. But we also knew that it required huge global coverage to recruit the tens of thousands of volunteers required to make it a success.

This campaign is the most important work we've done in Red Flag's nearly ten year history. It's an honor to be recognized by some of the biggest global names in our industry, but the metric we really care about is Call Russia's success activating 49,000 individual volunteers from 149 countries and counting, each making the most important calls of their lives to end this war."

About Red Flag: Red Flag operates globally out of offices in Washington DC, Dublin, Brussels, London, and Cape Town. Red Flag acquired in 2021 the Washington DC-based International Business-Government Counsellors (IBC), bringing together IBC's 50 years of economic and trade policy expertise with Red Flag's global strategy and communications offering.

About Call Russia: Call Russia was co-created by Not Perfect Vilnius and the 15 Min Group, supported by a global network of volunteers across technology, advertising and communications. For more information, visit CallRussia.org/Eng and follow @CallRussia on Twitter.