Cork Simon Community are a homeless charity based in Cork, Ireland. They believe that everyone should have fair access to safe, secure, and affordable housing. They do tremendous work throughout the Munster region, supporting individuals and families with housing, emergency shelter, addiction, education and much more.
Cork Simon depend heavily on donations to fund their services. The Christmas period is one of the most giving times of the year for every charity so ensuring you reach above the plethora of advertising and campaigns from charities and companies alike is a difficult task. Cork Simon wanted to devise a wide-reaching marketing campaign. They needed to get their message across and stand out from the noise of Christmas advertising. The campaign will run across print, social, Google Ads, cinema, and radio. It needs to be strong and marry across all channels.
A quick look at charity advertising, and Cork Simon's previous campaigns, reveals a clear visual pattern. We took a new approach using instantly recognisable graphics, a short memorable tagline and to ensure consistent brand recognition we kept to the strong brand colours only.
The simplicity of the visuals, from the icons to the colour palette, is the standout factor. The core idea is that passers-by and internet scrollers will take notice of a more direct approach after being somewhat numbed by the existing and familiar advertising of the Christmas period.
There were several meetings over the lack of imagery and familiarity, similar to previous campaigns and other charities. When discussed with stakeholders and third parties, the decision was to go with a new approach. A risk but one that ultimately paid off. The campaign was a success, Cork Simon Community reached their target donations ahead of schedule with the final number raised above projections. The client had the largest number of corporate sign-ups in their history.
