Homeless Donation Boxes
Raising The Roof
Issue 32 | September 2014
Agency
Leo Burnett, Toronto
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officer Judy John Creative Directors Judy John Lisa Greenberg Group Creative Director/ Copywriter Steve Persico Group Creative Director/Art Director Anthony Chelvanathan Photographer Jesse Senko
Production Team
Agency Producer Anne Peck Art Producers Laurie Filgiano Sabrina De Luca
Other Credits
Account Supervisor Jeremy Farncomb
Date
2013-2014
Background
Raising The Roof was an organisation that sought to find long-term solutions to homelessness through investment in local communities and public education. Like many charities, they used collection boxes to raise donations.
Idea
The creative approach was to completely rethink the donation box, taking the small box and making it human-sized. The boxes were placed on the street corners where people had become used to seeing the homeless. Images of real homeless people were printed on the boxes along with a message: 'A donation here helps free the homeless from living here.' The idea stopped people in their tracks and helped connect the act of giving with those in need.
Results
These homeless donation boxes raised 10x more than the typical donation box. More importantly, the emotional connection people had with the boxes sparked conversation and a 554% increase in online donations vs. the same time last year.
Our Thoughts
Plenty of ambient advertising is simply an object plonked down and getting in your way. A well-known brand once took over most of the busy pavement of a New York street with a huge spilled cup of coffee. Why? It just annoyed people.
For ambient to work, context is everything. The fact that this replaced an actual homeless person with a box depicting him/her would have been a moment of cognitive dissonance for the city workers used to walking that way every day. The plight of the real person is suddenly made more real.
Ambient is usually used to create awareness. That this got people to donate is testimony to its cut-through.