WARDROBE APARTMENT

Short List
TitleWARDROBE APARTMENT
BrandSOCIETY FOR COMMUNITY ORGANISATION
Product / ServiceNON-PROFIT
CategoryB07. Events & Stunts
EntrantBBDO PROXIMITY HONG KONG, HONG KONG
Idea Creation BBDO HONG KONG, HONG KONG
Production BBDO HONG KONG, HONG KONG

Credits

Name Company Position
Frankie Luk BBDO Hong Kong Executive Creative DIrector
Lesley Fung BBDO Hong Kong Associate Creative Director
Chun Man Li BBDO Hong Kong Copywriter
Kenneth Chao BBDO Hong Kong Senior Art Director
Rachel Lau BBDO Hong Kong Art Director
Andy Man BBDO Hong Kong Studio Manager
Ferris Tse UNITE Director

The Campaign

Our ah-ha moment came when we uncovered a common adage/ complaint among the citizens of Hong Kong – apartments in the city are so small, they don’t even have enough space to fit a wardrobe in the bedroom. The irony lay in that 200,000 homes in the city are, in fact, only the size of a normal 2m x 1m wardrobe. This analogy would be the key to turning an abstract problem into something real. THE BIG IDEA: WARDROBE APARTMENT We turned this common adage/ complaint on its head, recreating a real home in a standard sized wardrobe by outfitting it with the actual belongings of caged home dwellers. With this, Hong Kong people could experience for themselves how 200,00 people in Hong Kong live and, through this analogy, finally comprehend the gravity of the situation.

Execution

We hi-jacked apartment listings on the fronts of real estate offices with posters revealing the realities of our homes. The posters invited passersby to visit our “showroom” to test the space for themselves, luring traffic to our “Wardrobe Apartment” roadshow. Hong Kongers have an out of sight, out of mind approach to social issues, so we gave people no excuse to ignore us. We brought our wardrobe apartment out onto the busy streets of Hong Kong – people queued up to crawl into our wardrobes, bringing their children, signing our petitions for governmental action. We even listed ‘Wardrobe Apartment’ on Airbnb to spark awareness, and held a photo-exhibition to drive engagement and conversation; supporting all these on Facebook, the most popular social platform in Hong Kong. Our roadshow began on October 2, 2016 in Causeway Bay, and migrated to Tsim Sha Tsui and Central over the course of 4 weeks

With zero media spend, we attracted coverage from over 30 local and international news channels, garnering more than 2.3million earned media value. Overwhelmed by the public support for ‘Wardrobe Apartment’, Hong Kong’s Secretary for Housing, Mr. Anthony Leung met with SoCO; resulting in him increasing the supply for public housing in his latest 5 year plan. Additionally: • Our “Wardrobe Apartment” installation received some 20,000 visitors; that’s more people than the number of seats in the Hong Kong coliseum. • Among the visitors were Chief Executive candidates Regina Yip and Woo Kwok Hing, and former Chief Executive Tung Chee-Hwa. • With zero media spend, we garnered coverage from over 30 local and international news channels. • Our “Wardrobe Apartment” Facebook paged grew organic reach by 281x, giving SoCO the opportunity to reach and rally the community for future efforts. Sources: Facebook Insights, SoCO

The Situation

“Wardrobe Apartment” was a bold unconventional campaign that radically amplified the voice of the Society for Community Organisation (SoCO), a non-profit dedicated to enacting change for the inhumane housing situation for Hong Kong’s low-income earners. Using a wardrobe to demonstrate how 200,000 people in Hong Kong live in homes no bigger than 2m x 1m, SoCO attracted 20,000 on-site visitors, interested 30+ local and international news outlets (earning USD300,000 in media value), and drove policy change for Hong Kong’s long neglected housing situation – achieving this with zero media spend.

The Strategy

Our ultimate target was the Hong Kong government. They were aware of Hong Kong’s housing problem, but were not motivated to act as the issue was fraught with challenges. To motivate the government, we enacted widespread outcry from Hong Kong citizens, our secondary target. These people are constantly bombarded by messages from other charities, so we had to drive personal relevance to be compelling. A four-week campaign, making use of unexpected ways to draw widespread attention to a tired and complex issue: 1. Reframed the conversation – We helped Hong Kong people understand the harsh realities of caged homes by reframing how we presented the problem. 2. Took to the streets – We changed our approach in grabbing their attention by taking our campaign out onto the busy streets of Hong Kong’s CBDs. 3. Unconventional media – We made use of media channels SoCO never used before to spark conversation.