Qualitative research into Canadians’ attitudes around poverty reaffirmed the notion that poverty=homelessness. But The Salvation Army’s own research as well as stakeholder interviews revealed a strikingly different picture of who was leaning on the organization most: people with families, full time jobs, and roofs over their head.

In hearing these cases an important insight was revealed - that poverty is good at hiding. Functioning people who don’t live on the street are great at showing a better life than they really live. They often work full-time jobs but struggle to pay their monthly bills. Even working two jobs at 80-hours a week at minimum wage, there’s a chance they can’t afford hydro, to put food on the table or clothe their family.

So we revealed that the very poverty people thought existed in neighbourhoods far from theirs, was right under their nose, hiding behind a seemingly fine exterior.

In spring, an “Open House” exhibit was staged in a residential neighbourhood. It provided an authentic, immersive experience with visual displays that highlighted poverty facts. Over 40 hidden cameras filmed people’s reactions to create a :90sec video on The Salvation Army’s website, YouTube and Facebook pages.

Website visitors could take a 360-virtual tour of the home to uncover stats related to poverty. Traffic was driven through links in web banners and in our online video.

In November, film, print and radio launched the second phase of the campaign. On The Salvation Army’s Facebook page, we utilised 360 images to reveal a side of the holidays that most of us never see. At first glance, our posts looked like happy holiday cards. But once users engaged the 360 feature to further explore the images (each shot in a real home with real families) – it revealed how easily poverty hides.

Online donations increased 67% during the campaign vs. prior year.

Successful in our goal to drive awareness and relevancy through increased social and digital engagement as well as increased web traffic – a key indicator that we’d engaged the Millennial target.

YouTube:

Yearly views saw a 57% increase YOY, with more efficient CPVs delivered across the year – an important metric when working with charitable budgets.

All Media:

Increase in VTR YoY by 7% (from 23% to 30%).

1212% increase in mentions of Salvation Army post spring campaign launch.

Facebook:

Campaign delivered a VTR of 31.23%, well above industry and previous campaign averages of 25%.

Overall impressions of 11MM from Facebook alone and over 2.3MM engagements.

Twitter:

Impressions of over 2.5MM with average VTR of 30%, doubling the Twitter benchmark set for non-profits (15.4%).

Earned Media:

Both campaigns were covered in over 120 publications with over 1.4MM estimated readership/coverage views.