REARRANGING LIVES

TitleREARRANGING LIVES
BrandBEYOND SOCIAL SERVICES
Product / ServiceBEYOND SOCIAL SERVICES
CategoryA02. Posters
EntrantPUBLICIS SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE
Entrant Company PUBLICIS SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE
Advertising Agency PUBLICIS SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE

Credits

Name Company Position
Johnson Banks Graphics
Lauriane Dula Publicis Worldwide Art Buyer
Jean-Luc Chirio Publicis Worldwide Art Buyer
Kris Ng Publicis Singapore Associate Creative Director
Bastien Grisolet Publicis Worldwide Art Director
Pei Ling Ho Publicis Singapore Senior Copywriter
Jia Ying Goh Publicis Singapore Senior Art Director
Ajay Thrivikraman Publicis Singapore Chief Creative Officer
Erik Vervroegen Publicis Worldwide Worldwide Creative Director

Brief Explanation

How can we challenge entrenched stereotypes and convince the public that people can change and become useful members of the society without being frivolous or cliché? It’s not that simple. Also, to make the public pay attention, the communication also needs to be rooted in a strong Singapore context, and make it relatable to Singaporeans.

The Brief

Beyond Social Services wanted to attract more volunteers for their youth programmes. But recruitment is often difficult because delinquent youth is often perceived as “no good”, “hopeless” and having no future in Singapore’s meritocracy.

How the final design was conceived

We didn’t want complicated photography or visuals to overshadow the importance of our message. So we looked at the problem from many angles for the simplest and most elegant solution. We discovered we could turn a person's negative background (TEEN GANGSTER) into a positive future (SERGEANT TENG) simply by rearranging the letters. To make the campaign even more relevant to Singaporeans, we chose Asian surnames, and treated these anagrams using visually arresting typography to garner our target audience’s attention.

Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market

The core message of REARRANGED LIVES resonated with prospective individual and corporate volunteers as well as interest groups targeted in Beyond's outreach programmes for 2013. Used in Beyond’s events, these posters represented a change in the way the client communicated with potential volunteers. And more volunteers signed up compared to previous years.