The citizen’s platform Stop Desahucios created a social activation campaign in which participants used money as a media to stamp their demands, given that money is the only thing that the banks and the Government see. Through a web site, the public could order a rubber stamp specifically designed to stamp precisely under every bridge on every euro bill.
The Brief
The eviction rate had increased significantly in recent years but the phenomenon was getting less and less media attention. Neither was the government willing to do anything to resolve the problem.
Our challenge was therefore to raise awareness among our direct targets: media organisations and opinion leaders, citizens and lastly the government and the Banks.
Our communication objective was to raise society's interest and awareness and to exert pressure on politicians. The marketing objective was the enactment of the law.
Execution
We started with a universal insight. Where do people go when they are left without a home? Colloquially speaking it is said they go and live ‘under a bridge’ and we realised that every single euro bill has a bridge printed on it.
How can you place an evicted family under a bridge directly and symbolically? By creating a rubber stamp on which this family was represented and asking people to stamp it under the bridges on every euro bill.
Our appeal was made through the hashtag #NoMasDesahucios and moved on social networks, from despatches to opinion leaders and a web site. In less than 24 hours a social movement had been created in the streets, on social networks and in the media. Currently the movement continues advancing organically.
The most significant result: Two weeks after the campaign launch, the Spanish President announced the ‘Second Chance Law’ to stop evictions. Additionally, the other political parties included similar policies in their electoral programs.
• ROI of 1,217,220 €
• An estimated audience of 80.1 million
• All 20,000 stamps available from the website ran out within 24 hours.
• More than 120 media appearances including on the highest rating TV programs
• More than 100,000 tweets supported the campaign in the first week published by anonymous users and celebrities.
• Thousands of euro bills stamped
• When stocks of stamps ran out, many people ‘drew’ our stamp on euro bills
• While in January 2015 only 1.8% of Spaniards ranked eviction among the top three problems, in March, the month following the campaign, this figure had gone up to 2.4%.
The Strategy
Our direct target was the media and opinion leaders, in whose agendas the issue of evictions was appearing less and less. It was vital that they covered our campaign. Our second target was citizens, who were paying less and less attention to the problem and had forgotten about Stop Desahucios’ campaigns, those which should have made us more aware. Indirectly we reached the Government (which was ignoring the Stop Desahucios platform and its demands). All three targets were impacted by the campaign and the response was greater than we could have hoped, converting the campaign into a singular social movement.
Our objective was to make society aware of and empathetic to the issue to amend this injustice. How? Through a ‘media’ that would put our message directly into everyone’s hands…euro bills. We used a rubber stamp as a protest to spread our message.