A campaign to promote press freedom by Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar and advertising agency Impact BBDO, was awarded the Grand Prix in the Print and Publishing category at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity recently.

The “Newspapers Inside the Newspaper Edition,” was initially launched on Dec. 12, 2022, to commemorate the death of An-Nahar editor-in-chief Gebran Tueni, who was assassinated in 2005.

The edition was unlike any other the paper had previously published. Each spread sought to revive defunct newspapers by inviting journalists, who had worked for these publications, to write articles.

The campaign featured six Lebanese newspapers: Al-Anouar, The Daily Star, Al-Hayat, As-Safir, Al-Mostaqbal and Al-Bayraq.

Congratulations to Impact BBDO, Dubai | Grand Prix winners in the Print & Publishing Lions for ‘Newspapers Inside the Newspaper’.
Explore all winning and shortlisted work, exclusively on The Work here: https://t.co/4UPYofq5K2#CannesLions70 | #CannesLions2023 pic.twitter.com/E2NwBlkv3T

— LIONS | The Home of Creativity (@Cannes_Lions) June 19, 2023

“For An-Nahar it is not enough to just say that we support the freedom of the press,” said Nayla Tueni, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, in a statement at the launch of the campaign.

“We have to prove it. And what better way to do that than to bring back to life some of the publications that were silenced, and to give them one more chance to speak freely.”

The print edition of the newspaper sold out and online readership broke records, the paper said.

Last year, too, Impact BBDO Dubai and An-Nahar won the Grand Prix in the same category for the campaign “The Election Edition,” which was never printed. This was done to highlight alleged attempts by certain Lebanese government officials to disrupt a scheduled parliamentary election.