YOUTH OFF THE STREETS: THE LONGER THEY'RE HERE ...

Credits:

Type of Entry: Use of Media
Category: Best Use of Outdoor
Title: THE LONGER THEY'RE HERE ...
Advertiser/Client: YOUTH OFF THE STREETS
Product/Service: HOMELESSNESS CHARITY
Entrant Company: LAVENDER* Sydney, AUSTRALIA
Advertising Agency: LAVENDER* Sydney, AUSTRALIA
Creative Credits
Name Company Position
Simon Lee Lavender* Creative Director/Copywriter
Rua Perston Lavender* Art Director
Dom Hickey Lavender* Account Manager
Laila Takesh Lavender* Art Buyer
Leigh Butler Lavender* Production
Ben Rollison Studio Go Photographer
Rebecca James Lavender* Managing Director
Christopher Ostendorf Youth Off The Streets Corporate Partnerships Manager
Ina Mullin Youth Off The Streets Media/Communications Co-Ordinator
Details
Results and Effectiveness:
The campaign ran in December 2008. It attracted national press and radio and international online coverage. During the campaign period, a total of AU$92,000 in donations was received - enough to provide hot meals to over 200 kids every night for six months. Online donations increased by a massive 400%.
Creative Execution:
We created life size, die-cut street posters of children, printed on low-grade stock and featuring a URL and phone number for donations. We then carefully scouted and selected a variety of urban locations in which we were confident the posters would rapidly degenerate. Our “The longer they’re here ...” street posters were thus an un-ignorable metaphor for exactly what happens to children on the street. As time passed, they were sun-bleached and slightly ragged, then torn, defaced and abused. Then finally, after weeks of crying out for help, they were gone.
Insights, Strategy and the Idea:
There are over 100,000 children living on the streets in Australia. As the name suggests, Youth Off The Streets is a charity that supports these young Australians as they work to turn their lives around and overcome immense personal traumas such as neglect and physical, psychological and emotional abuse. Our challenge was to increase awareness of youth-homelessness and prompt people to donate to Youth Off The Streets. A series of disturbing proven facts were at the heart of the idea. In the words of Father Chris Reilly, founder of Youth Off The Streets: “Once you’re on the streets, you’ll be sexually assaulted within two or three days, you’ll be a drug addict within five days, and be dead before you’re 21, if you don’t get help.” Put simply, the longer a child is on the streets, the worse it gets.