Insight
How do you connect school kids with the issue of youth homelessness with no budget? Spending nights walking the streets with the charity, Youth OFF The Streets saw that when homeless youth go to sleep for the night on the streets they do so with their shoes on; worried that they will get stolen or that they'll simply be too cold without them on. It is this moment that Mindshare identified as the one that could connect the target audience with the issue.
A school kid's day is framed by tying the laces on their shoes. Whether it's when they get up in the morning or when they get home in the afternoon, it's a point of unconscious privilege that homeless kids don't enjoy. What if Mindshare could use shoelaces to bring the issue of youth homelessness to life?
Strategy
Recognising that it needed to place the message in a way that would be accepted by parents and by teachers, Mindshare began to look at available channels. However, Mindshare soon realised that the audience are unreachable by media for the majority of the day they are at school, so it needed to look further. With a limited budget the investment had to make returns and work to raise awareness of the message. There was no single channel that would work, so Mindshare invented it: Blue, branded shoelaces would provide connection to the issue by drawing attention to the reality of sleeping on the streets, would be accepted by parents and teachers, and be a unique, donation-driving broadcast channel in itself.
How to get school kids to wear blue laces? Put them on the people that matter most to them.
Execution
Laces were seeded out to influencers, like actors from Home and Away one of the most popular soaps for the core audience, which created demand and an instant cool to care factor.
Simultaneously the agency stenciled #laceitup on the city streets covering high traffic areas in the CBD and targeting the commute to school for those particular schools participating in the event. This was then followed by coverage of the laces across trade press and youth sites including Pedestrian.tv, MTV and Nickelodeon Australia as well as blogs, user-created videos, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. All content that was created with the laces was leveraged through the Facebook and Instagram accounts of Youth Off The Streets in order to draw attention to those channels as well.
By promoting people to share photos of their laces and linking the activity together with the hashtag #laceitup, it could visibly connect the community to the issue and each other.
The campaign quickly went beyond the school gates. The simplicity of the laces and the stencils spread across Instagram as people uploaded their own photos emulating those of the influencers and their friends. People were driven to the Youth Off The Streets website through this content, where they could order their own pair to #laceitup.
#laceitup became the symbol of youth homelessness in 2014 when the laces made it to the floor of NSW Parliament in August. As Members debated homelessness during National Homelessness Week, #laceitup blue laces hung around the necks of the State Government front bench and the Speaker of the House.
The idea framed the debate. #laceitup had become central to the homelessness conversation.
Results
#laceitup was initially targeted at school children but quickly expanded in impact. The campaign established the blue laces as Youth Off The Streets' owned media which continues to generate earned media and much needed donations for the charity. Earned media reached more than 1.4 million Australians ad most importantly - lace it up delivered an increase of over 125% in donations YOY and counting.
With the money raised so far, Youth Off The Streets can:
• Offer over 250 nights of crisis accommodation;
• Deliver over 500 weeks of learning at its high schools;
• Supply warm clothing for 1000 disadvantaged youth;
• Provide more than 5 years’ worth of counselling, family support and rehabilitation.
With thousands of laces on the streets of Sydney, every step is making a difference to the lives of the most vulnerable Australians. For the young people on the streets, this means an opportunity to have a safe place to sleep and untie their laces.