#laceitup

Objectives

The mission for Mindshare was to help Youth Off The Streets (YOTS) put homelessness back on the national agenda and generate an increase in donations among school children All with a minimal budget. 

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. Reality hit when 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 high-footfall CBD locations with chalk stencils on pavements.

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

% and 35,000 new fans were acquired, with 93% of conversations positive

Judges found this to be a tough decision, debating two entries at length.

#laceitup had an insight that gave the judges goosebumps. Beautiful and simple, it truly resonated with the youth audience.

As an industry we talk about ‘living the brand’, this is it. #laceitup shows what good thinking can do to your business regardless of the budget you can create a campaign that has real impact and deliver human results. A Powerful outcome

The campaign is absolutely pure, and has a great story of starting as an NGEN entry to being realized as an actual campaign and importantly, has created a long term ownable property for the client.

Love it!