According to the UN a language disappears every two weeks. 68 indigenous languages are spoken in Mexico, but 60% of them are slowly dying. There is an urgent need to preserve, revitalize and promote those languages.
Missed Words
Saving languages call by call
Challenge
Inspiration
Movistar exists for people to talk and we want them to keep to talking, regardless of language. So, in 2019, the International Year of Indigenous Languages, we decided to rescue its most important part: its words.
Idea
We discovered help them could be simpler than we thought, so we decided to turn one of our most common tools into a teacher. Knowing the location of origin of the calls we created an algorithm that was able to detect the indigenous dialect spoken on that specific region, transcribing missed calls’ notifications to that language.
Growth
For more than a month we turned our brand awareness into cultural education. We rewrote more than 101,500 missed call notifications and taught more than 17,000 indigenous words from 50 ancient dialects. The campaign didn’t stop there, people and media joined and amplified our cause, spreading those disappearing words. With their help, words became alive and more than 15,7 million people were impacted.
