2019 Brand Experience & Activation

ADDRESS POINT - POINTING A WAY BACK HOME FOR IRELAND'S HOMELESS

Bronze eurobest Award

Case Film

Presentation Image

TitleADDRESS POINT - POINTING A WAY BACK HOME FOR IRELAND'S HOMELESS
BrandAN POST
Product/ServiceADDRESS POINT
Category A08. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) / Corporate Image
Entrant WUNDERMAN THOMPSON Dublin, IRELAND
Idea Creation JWT FOLK Dublin, IRELAND
Credits
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 brand 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 people living in Ireland. An Post is dedicated to acting with purpose and does this through a series of CSR initiatives. Its goal is to improve the lives of people living in Ireland. This work delivers on this in a sustainable and long term way to address a social issue at the heart of Irish culture.

background

An Post, Ireland’s national postal service exists to improve the quality of life for people in Ireland. It promises to leave no Irish person behind, expressed through its brand platform, “For Your World”. To do this responsibly, it takes a wide eye view of the challenges Irish people face and identifies where it can have impact. One such challenge is Ireland’s homelessness crisis. In the decade since the financial crisis, Ireland has had a crippling lack of investment in housing. Today, Ireland is a first world country with a third world problem with 10,125 people homeless. The societal and cultural repercussions of homelessness are immense, de-humanising and long lasting and exist uniquely for this audience. As part of An Post’s CSR initiatives, it wanted a solution to address this issue in such a way that brings An Post’s brand purpose to life.

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 this 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 this to our target audience stood to position An Post as a purpose led brand that genuinely exists to support Irish people.

Describe the execution (30% of vote)

Introducing Address Point, 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, one third 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 positive perception of the An Post brand. Sentiment 99% positive, with the most uses words in media being 'practical', 'essential' and 'inclusive', clearly proving with An Post’s purpose.