Title	ADDRESS POINT - POINTING A WAY BACK HOME FOR IRELAND'S HOMELESS
Brand	AN POST
Product/Service	ADDRESS POINT
Category	E01. Launch / Re-launch
Entrant	WUNDERMAN THOMPSON Dublin, IRELAND
Idea Creation	JWT FOLK Dublin, IRELAND

Name	Company	Position
Abi Moran	JWT Folk	CEO
Karl Waters	JWT Folk	Creative Partner
Enda Kelly	JWT Folk	Managing Director
Keith Lawler	JWT Folk	Creative Director
Ed Leamy	JWT Folk	Creative Technologist
Donal O'Higgins	JWT Folk	Senior Creative
Eimear Fitzmaurice	JWT Folk	Senior Strategic Planner
Simon Killeen	JWT Folk	Senior Account Manager
Tamara Conyngham	JWT Folk	Strategist
Eric Brindley	JWT Folk	Producer

Why is this work relevant for Brand Experience & Activation?

This work builds affinity for An Post by creating a permanent brand experience that reflects its purpose, is optimised for maximum impact and communicates to its audience why An Post is a brand relevant to them; to improve the quality of life for Irish people. An Post, Ireland’s National Postal Service, had a relevancy issue. Its goal with this activity was to make the brand more relevant to generations that had forgotten its importance in their lives. This work not only delivers on this from launch, it is a sustainable, long term way to address a social issue.

background

Despite being a long established and well trusted brand, An Post, Ireland’s national postal service was a brand losing relevance. In 2018, the brand commenced a programme of transformation, making significant moves designed to secure and create a bright future. This led to a new brand new purpose, to improve the quality of life for Irish people, expressed through its new brand platform, ‘For Your World’. Alongside a refreshed brand identity and updated product launch, An Post wanted to activate its purpose and show An Post’s relevance today. Improving the quality of life for everyone in Ireland meant addressing the number one issue facing Ireland, a national housing crisis. The quality of life for everyone was at risk but the nation’s attention was focused on the numbers identifying as homeless which for the first time in history in March 2019, hit over 10,000.

Describe the creative idea (20% of vote)

The cruel irony of homelessness is that to get help, you need an address. As a brand committed to improving the quality of life for all of the people of Ireland, An Post sought to find a way to provide homeless people with an address. While we cannot fix the issue of adequate housing, we believed that we could improve access to essential services and create an infrastructure that stood to break the cycle of homelessness and address a national issue. This was a credible brand activation for An Post as only a postal service could deliver such a solution. With an address, we are giving people the means to access essential national services that to date, have been unnecessarily limited to those with a fixed address, breaking the cycle of homelessness and helping people re-connect with society by improving access to: Health services Housing Education Potential employment

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

To understand how best to execute this solution, we hosted research groups with members of the homeless community and the target audience. We established that the address needed to be: Flexible – To reflect the nomadic nature of life as someone who is homeless Free – To leave no one behind Human – It needs to feel like a real address and not a P.O Box, to reduce stigma Simple - The experience of signing up needed to be a two-step process using simple language and minimal data commitment A secondary consideration was also creating a blueprint that could be easily adopted by other postal services around the world to provide this solution in other countries facing a similar issue. Successfully delivering this solution and communicating it to our target audience stood to position An Post as a brand relevant to today’s world.

Describe the execution (30% of vote)

Introducing Address Point - Address Point is a free nationwide service that provides a fixed address to those without a fixed home. It enables them to receive regular post and access essential services by creating a fixed proxy address at local post offices, allowing them to collect their post at a time and place convenient to them. If someone moves to a different area, they can generate a new address for their new residence, meaning they can now get reliable access to healthcare, education, employment and housing. The address that it generates borrows the post office’s physical address and includes a unique identifier that notifies the post master to hold the post at the post office for collection. The result is a human address with no numbers or unusual letters. It launched April 5th in collaboration with Ireland’s homeless service network through PR and service advocates.

List the results (30% of vote)

Since April 2019, 1/3 of Ireland’s adult homeless community have signed up to Address Point. Address Point is used daily, accessed across the country. At the current rate of sign ups, An Post predict that within the next six months it will be serving 66% of the community. The launch generated national and international press, 220 million media earned impressions, consuming all national broadcast stations including prime time news on our national TV and radio broadcaster. This resulted in 41% awareness of Address Point across Ireland. (*Kantar MWB, Sept 2019) Analysis of the ‘For Your World’ campaign saw An Post score highest across endorsements for associations like ‘Modern’, ‘Trust’ and ‘Innovation’, showing that this activity successfully contributed to a perception change of the An Post brand. Sentiment was 99% positive at launch, with the most uses words in media being 'practical', 'essential' and 'inclusive', clearly proving with An Post’s purpose.