Brief Explanation

Every year, 11,000 ex-offenders in Singapore are released. But because of society's stigma, they find it difficult to return to normal life. How do we get people to empathise with someone who's broken the law? We wanted to show that everyone makes mistakes, and everyone deserves a second chance. So the Second Chance URL catches people at an apt moment – when they've made a mistake of their own – a typo. We took over the error page people get when they misspell a URL, delivering a timely reminder to empathise: get your second chance, and give ex-offenders theirs.

Results and Effectiveness

With over 30 Second Chance URLs, we saw a 37% boost in traffic to the Yellow Ribbon Project's Facebook page. Their following grew to 75,000. And because it's easy to track visitor analytics for every Second Chance URL, we empowered our client to better connect with their audience. We could potentially reach 6 million people here, and 7 billion worldwide – all with a budget of under $1,000.

Creative Execution

We identified the most common (and available) URL typos based on Singaporeans' top 30 visited websites, and took over these pages. Now when anyone makes these typos, they'll load the Second Chance URL page. From here, one click is all it takes to give a second chance and declare your support on Facebook. The campaign can be easily replicated across countless more URLs. With over 1 billion websites globally and even more misspelt variations, there is ever-growing potential to reach millions.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

We identified a simple but novel way to spark a digital movement. Tapping into a common mistake that everyone makes – typos – we took over the error page people get when they misspell a URL. For the first time in Internet history, we used commonly misspelt URLs to push a good cause. With the Second Chance URL initiative, the Yellow Ribbon Project now owns low-cost media space with big potential. It's easily replicable, hard to ignore, and cleverly aligned with their messaging.