#laceitup
Award Category
Best Use Of A Small Budget (Up to $300,000)
Agency
Mindshare
Client
Youth Off The Streets
Sponsor
Objectives
The mission for Mindshare was to help Youth Off The Streets (YOTS) put homelessness back on the national agenda and to generate an increase in donations among school children.
Campaign
Mindshare needed to communicate in a way that didn’t purely rely on smartphones. To gain insight, the team spent a night with YOTS on the streets, talking to disadvantaged youth, listening to their stories and learning about the impact of charity. It became apparent homeless youth sleep with their shoes on for fear of them being stolen, leaving the laces tied up. To create the connection with the audience, Mindshare created blue, branded shoelaces and promoted the sharing of photos of people with their laces, linking the actions with #laceitup to visibly connect the community to the issue. To get school kids involved, the agency gave the shoelaces to influencers to get creative and upload photos with the hashtag, along with a call to action. Actors from Home & Away were involved and teams targeted school and highfootfall CBD locations with chalk stencils on pavements. The campaign spread via Instagram and Facebook.
Results
#laceitup became the symbol of youth homelessness right through to NSW Parliament, when debating the issue during National Homelessness Week, the blue laces hung around the necks of the state government front bench and speaker of the house. In 2014 in just two months, the campaign generated a reach of 850,000, with 32,000 engagements on Instagram and more than 6,000 blue shoelaces in the shoes of school children. The campaign generated extensive coverage across print, radio and online, reaching more than 1.2 million Australians, with over 30 individual editorial pieces. Despite a 13% decrease in school fundraising budgets, the campaign more than doubled donations (+112%) YOY. With the funds raised, YOTS can offer 500 nights of crisis accommodation, deliver 120 weeks of learning at high schools, supply warm clothing for 200 disadvantaged youth and provide more than a year’s worth of counselling and rehab.
Judges Comments
This campaign was a great demonstration of taking a strong insight and developing a big idea that can be deployed year after year. The execution was smart; reaching the target audience during a virtual black-out period and amplified through social media.
