The Street Store
The Haven Night Shelter
Issue 32 | September 2014
Agency
M&C Saatchi Abel Cape Town
Creative Team
Copywriter Kayli Vee Levitan Art Director/Designer Max Pazak Executive Creative Director Gordon Ray
Production Team
Production Sonja Genis Sarah Matthes
Other Credits
Account Management Faheem Chaudhry
Date
January 2014
Background
The Haven Night Shelter provided support, clothing, shelter and rehabilitation for homeless people in South Africa.
The task was to increase awareness and bring in clothing donations, bridging the gap between the haves and the have-nots.
People want to donate but they don't know how, where or are frightened of the unknown. On the other hand, for the homeless begging for clothing is degrading. The aim was to help them feel human again.
Idea
The Street Store was simply a series of die-cut, cardboard posters. People wanting to donate simply hung their clothes through a gap in the poster, as they would on a clothes hanger.
Alternatively, they could drop old shoes into the specially designed flat boxes.
Just as the donors originally went shopping for the clothes, now the homeless could come and browse and help themselves with the help of shop assistants from The Haven.
Because homelessness is not a problem unique to South Africa, The Haven made the idea available to anyone. Individuals or organisations were free to download the posters and a how-to guide from their website.
Results
Within 2 days of calling for donations on social media, it trended nationally, was on national radio, tv and in press. The campaign was also featured on countless international sites such as Trendhunter, Bono's One Organisation, Huffington Post, GOOD, and hundreds more.
The team were then offered, and have since presented a TEDx talk and have been interviewed by local and international organisations. As of April 2014, free PR in excess of R27 million was generated off a mere R5 000 budget.
In South Africa alone more than 3500 homeless have been clothed.
Street Stores have begun popping up around the world, from Cape Town to Johannesburg, to Brazil, Vancouver, Brussels, San Diego, California and more. To date, 21 stores have progressed and 335 people have signed up to host one in their community.
Our Thoughts
I am conscious that 20% of the cases in this issue are pro bono. We want Directory to be a reference tool for people who have to live with commercial realities each
day. However, this is interesting because the creative people were forced by a lack of budget to go all the way back to first principles. Not, what sort of ad can we do? But, what is the problem to be solved? There is a lesson in this for all of us as and when putting a brief together.