Hinz&Kunzt streetmagazine Hamburg wanted to influence the city council/state government elections with a public affairs campaign. The starting point: In rich Hamburg, Germany, thousands of people are homeless and even more people cannot afford to pay rent anymore, while at the same time over 1.4 million square meters of flats and offices are left vacant on purpose. This is an unbelievable imbalance needed to be made public, get media attention and thus become a key topic of the elections. The core audience: 1.2 million residents of Hamburg eligible to vote. The strategic insight that helped shape the idea: Hamburg would be flooded with the typical, glossy, colorful but boring political campaigning from all parties. With an unconventional approach, public stunts and the right messaging it would be easy to gain attention. A guerilla campaign was launched to mark over 400 vacant buildings in the city. Additional stunts, including a very large one, were carried out in the city center. The campaign used portraits of homeless that were cut into cardboard alongside their messages. This made for perfect news images. Via press kits, invites to the sites of the stunts and many interviews this guerilla ambient campaign found its way into many reports.

Cardboard is the cliché material of homelessness. Using this material is cheap. The special design of handcut portraits of homeless made the campaign stand out: These faces gave the messages punch and made the problem personal. They also stood in contrast to the colorful election posters of the political parties. Look, feel, and content added up and made a striking campaign. But the guerilla placement directly on vacant buildings, as well as placement of cardboard floor posters in shopping areas (including a giant 300 square meter version on the main market) are what created the media attention and direct engagement needed. All materials included a call to action: vote against homelessness, discuss online, participate in our survey. In short: nontraditional media and unconventional design were used to create maximum awareness - and images that the press picked up. The press was invited on location and given full information.

Prior to launch, the design idea, the topic and content of the campaign helped to win more than 20 companies to contribute work and materials (printing, media space, etc). This was key in order to be able to produce a campaign that really reaches the whole city. Only 19.000EUR invested created an advertising value of nearly 300.000 EUR. More importantly; the press did get on board and countless articles and TV reports followed. The topic got into public sphere and actually was picked up by the political parties. The combination of guerilla placement of media and media reaction garnered 22 million contacts in Hamburg. This awareness and attention was more than ever imagined possible. Most importantly; in the end, the ruling conservative party lost and a new, more social mayor won. To this day, the topic of homelessness and difficult rental market are still a leading theme in local press.