Invisible Suit
Wayside Chapel
Issue 9 | December 2008
Agency
M&C Saatchi/Mark
Creative Team
Gavin McLeod - Creative Director; Hamish Stewart - Head of Copy; Yash Gandhi - Copywriter; Genevieve Hoey - Copywriter; Dave King - Copywriter; Hannes Ciatti - Art Director; Adrian McNamara - Art Director
Production Team
Nick Lilley
Other Credits
Andrea Kerekes – Access PR
Date
July 2008
Background
Since 1964 the Wayside Chapel (WC) has cared for Sydney’s homeless, but 2008 was going to be their toughest winter yet, with rising interest rates, food and fuel prices increasing the numbers of homeless and cutting sharply into donations. The WC needed money urgently to care for this spike in homeless people. To increase donations, they needed to raise public awareness - without any money for advertising. The agency decided to focus on gaining media exposure.
Idea
Their idea was to challenge high-profile journalists to live as a homeless person in Sydney. They hand delivered each journalist an ‘invisibility suit’, which at first glance looked like the outfit of a superhero. On opening it, they discovered the truth: the ‘suit’ was actually the clothes of a homeless person. Recipients were invited to wear the outfit on the streets for 24 hours, then to report on the experience in the media. WC volunteers helped get them into character and introduced them to long-term homeless people, staying with them to ensure their safety. The homeless people’s experiences became fertile ground for their articles.
Results
As journalists want ‘exclusives’, the agency only approached one at a time. The first two were about to go on vacation, but the third committed immediately - a 33% response rate. Their editor agreed to run the story in The Good Weekend magazine, which appears in Australia’s most well respected Saturday newspapers The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, read by over 1.7 million Australians. At a cost of less than AUS$5 per pack – a grand total of under AUS$15 – the campaign gained AUS$200,000 in free media (the equivalent of three full page ads). In other words, for every single dollar invested, the campaign received over AUS$13,333 in media exposure and reached over 110,000 people.
Target audience
One high-profile Sydney journalist
Volume/ size of campaign
Three packs
Our Thoughts
I know some people think Directory is all about bigging up charity campaigns aimed at target audiences of one. And in this instance they’d be absolutely right. If your target audience is a journalist who can help you reach 1.7 million readers, who tend to believe what they read in the newspaper rather more than anything that looks like advertising, then that seems pretty nifty to me. (Incidentally, when Richard Branson launched Virgin Cola in the USA, he targeted just one person too. Roberto Goizueta, CEO of Coca-Cola. So wafer-thin segmentation has its proponents.)