St. Mungo's

Christmas emergency appeal for homelessness charity

"This was our first time working with DCX. We were impressed with their creativity and experience and have enjoyed working with the team to bring their ideas to life."

Hayley Creasey, Campaign Manager, St Mungo’s

_________________________________________________

Background

Homelessness charity appeals at Christmas usually focus is on the fact that homelessness is worse in winter.

St Mungo's wanted to challenge what people think.

People think homelessness always starts with drink or drugs. They think the solution is a bed for the night. And they think animal charities are more deserving than human ones.

St Mungo's wanted a campaign to change all that.

Solution

In order to subvert pre-conceptions about homelessness, we developed two campaigns.

Campaign one used real stories to show homelessness starts for many reasons. Divorce, redundancy, bereavement, and abuse are things that could happen to all of us. The campaign drove home the message that wherever homelessness starts, a donation has the power to end it.

Campaign two used the insight that British people love their pets. The idea was simple. If you think it’s terrible that a dog is sleeping rough, think what’s it’s like for the owner. The ads gave the impression that we were talking about the dog, only to reveal we were actually talking about the homeless person.

Different executions detailed the appalling treatment the homeless and their dogs face. Troubles such as being set on fire, urinated on, and spat at. Again, the campaign focused on asking for a donation that could change both the lives of homesless people and their pets.

Both campaigns were rolled out on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Google Ads, giving us the chance to test and optimise effectiveness and results.

Social media was the perfect environment for St Mungo’s to highlight these heart-breaking stories. The contrast the hard-hitting creative brought against most people’s curated, filtered social media activity, was incredibly stark and created real cut-through for the charity's message.