The Albert Kennedy Trust were stuck in a vicious circle – lacking awareness to raise donations & offers of help, and without enough money to raise awareness. We needed to spike their cause into culture with zero spend, leading to direct action fast – interest/awareness, donations and volunteers.We had to hit two goals. Highlight the issue behind the cause with clarity and then lodge it into peoples’ consciousness in the most powerful, memorable and talkable way possible. We designed an idea to reach beyond the LGBT community to anyone who is charitable and might empathise with the issue.

Talking about the cause itself in direct explanatory terms would not work. If we simply said that many young LGBT people are homeless because of their sexuality, it might be hard for people to understand the difference vs the cause of homelessness itself. Equally, the charity was all too aware of risking sounding like a preachy gay rights charity believing LGBT people deserved more. So we framed the issue in a more powerful and lateral way – what if famous LGBT people had been thrown out by their own parents simply for coming out? How different could their lives have been?

Versus goals of awareness, talkability, and donations, results surpassed all targets.The campaign was seen by 2.7m ITV viewers on The Paul O’Grady Show, touched 3m Evening Standard/Gay Times readers, and garnered 52k YouTube views. In terms of active interest online, hits soared 380%, with Facebook and Twitter fans up 52% and 57%.For donations, we experienced a 22% uplift, with 10 events pledged by Blue Chip companies and 1,400 new donor relationships formed. Volunteer requests were so high that AKT had to stop taking applications. All of which helped towards the opening of a London-based safe house.