Shelter is the housing and homeless charity. Following the 2008 economic collapse, their cause was greater than ever. 79,000 households were already living in temporary accommodation and this was predicted to increase to over 150,000 by the end of 2009.We were briefed to create awareness of the issue and to help generate new funding.However:- We wanted to avoid the usual melodrama typical to the sector.- There were already a whole range of other good causes out there fighting for the public’s attention, many with far bigger budgets, so we knew our idea would have to work that bit harder to succeed.Our solution was the ‘House of Cards’ campaign, an idea based on the universally recognised metaphor for fragility which could be rolled out across multiple platforms, starting with a TV commercial and finishing with an exhibition of artwork supplied by the world’s leading artists.

We launched with a TV and print campaign depicting landscapes with various buildings made from playing cards in a state of collapse.Once the ‘House of Cards’ campaign idea was established we took the campaign further by erecting a lifesize model of a house of cards amongst the tents at Glastonbury to deliver a news-grabbing message about temporary housing.

Finally we launched the final phase, the House of Cards Exhibition, where we invited 52 leading artists to design a playing card each and make the ultimate deck of cards. One of the cards was opened up to the public with a huge, Metro backed competition that garnered over 300,000 votes; and London’s street artists were recruited to create further hype by creating a live poster campaign in the days before launch.An online gallery was also launched and collectors-item packs produced, helping the campaign to live on after the exhibition.

The exhibition was a huge success – thousands visited it in person and hundreds of thousands visited it online.

Furthermore the subsequent auction and the sale of the limited edition packs of cards raised over £150,000.Overall the campaign was exposed to over 7 million eyeballs, led to a 1600% increase in the number of online discussions on homelessness issue and helped secure several new government initiatives to prevent repossession.