Honduras suffers one of the world’s worst gang problems. They prey on the young, with recruitment starting before the age of 10. With 36,000 gang members and 12,000 police officers, Honduras now tops the world’s homicide league.

Kenco is one of the largest buyers of Honduran coffee, operating in a market where buyers are notoriously unresponsive to the idea of changing what’s in their basket. With a commitment to ethical conduct, Kenco has strong heritage in campaigning for fairness and needed to re-assert its ethical leadership of the category – to become known for more than great-tasting coffee.

This led to a ground-breaking corporate responsibility programme, Coffee Vs. Gangs - a pioneering scheme to give young Hondurans a way out of gang life by training them as coffee entrepreneurs.

Over 12 months, viewers followed 20 recruits through stories in traditional and social media, emotionally engaging documentary films and TV and Cinema ads. In-depth features paired with online assets created various touch points where the public could learn more about Honduras and follow the participants’ stories.

Over 2 million people watched these stories and a Daily Telegraph editorial partnership saw the bespoke Coffee Vs. Gangs micro-site become the newspaper’s best performing content, reaching 6.6 million people.

International coverage launched the campaign and support from the Honduran Ambassador and Premier League footballer, Wilson Palacios, drove earned media reach of over 200m, including an 8 min slot on BBC World Service. Furthermore, a feature on Sky News saw Mondelez Marketing Manager, Martin Andreasen interviewed about the scheme on live TV.

Kenco Coffee Vs. Gangs used a range of digital media and tie-ins to reach its target audience. A partnership with the Daily Telegraph saw the news site launch its new Honduras Gangs page, in association with Kenco. The page is fully Kenco branded with updated reports on the Coffee Vs. Gangs scheme and also independent reports on Honduras itself. Stories on the site range from covering gang culture to the drugs trade. It also contains a large focus on the coffee industry that thrives there. The tie-in went live in conjunction with the scheme and has been live since.

In the final quarter of 2014 (one month after our 6 week TV campaign finished) 52% more jars of Kenco’s core range sold than in 2013, increasing market share by 3% and growing value sales by 37%. Importantly, the editorial partnership with the Daily Telegraph, saw the bespoke Coffee Vs. Gangs microsite become the newspaper’s best performing content – reaching 6.6m people. The Coffee Vs. Gangs scheme shifted ethical perceptions of the category and disrupted that coffee category itself (IPSOS Research 2015).