Crisis "Ambient Campaign"

Crisis, the homeless charity, were really only known for their "Crisis at Christmas" shelters and retraining centres. They needed to remind people that the problem of the homelessness didn't go away after the centres closed and the homeless people moved on. The idea was to make sure homelessness continued to get noticed, by putting "homeless people" on the streets where they could be seen. So they created a life-sized crouching homeless person entirely from typography. They wanted the freedom to put their "homeless person" right there on the streets, so they used a technique called "Reverse Graffiti" to clean-off rather than spray-on our design. Under cover of darkness they cleaned off areas of dirty concrete in doorways, down alleys, by cash machines and around tube stations. The reserve graffiti technique meant the tagging was legal and imporrtantly for a charity - free of media costs. The design incorporated a URL which took you though to the Crisis micro site, where people could find out more and get involved. The stunt generated a huge amount of interest and PR coverage, totally out of proportion of its 3000 pond Sterling spend. Currently, all the tagged city cites are still intact and reminding people on a daily basis that homelessness hasn't gone away.

Agency: WWAV Rapp Collins, United Kingdom.