In the UK 97% of women aged 18-24 have experienced street harassment, so it’s not a surprise that the

majority of women feel unsafe walking alone at night. Not just in dark parks, but in well-lit areas. So what happens when the thing they rely on to help them get home safe doesn’t work? Running out of mobile data makes the situation worse; leaving them even more vulnerable when planning a route home.

EE’s ‘Stay Connected Data’ helps the 772,000 of their customers that run out of data each month stay connected to essential apps on their phone like CityMapper and Google Maps. We needed an action to exemplify the security that Stay Connected offers to EE customers, for everyone, regardless of their phone network.

The work needed to reinforce EE’s leadership position, addressing a genuine societal need and driving key Masterbrand consideration levers.

Women rely on their phones and their mobile network to get home, so when they aren’t working (they run out of data or battery), they feel even more vulnerable. As a technology leader, EE wanted to do something to make women feel safer when traveling home after a night out.

Project Home Safe is the first connected route home, with a combination of digital OOH and street projections pulling in live data, designed to help students in Manchester get home safely when they’re out-out and out of data.

We used the technology available and real time mobile data to give our DOOH the functionality of a smartphone, emulating essential apps like CityMapper, Google Maps, Uber and WhatApp. Helping everyone get home safe, even if they were on another mobile network.

The campaign strategy was highly targeted to ensure we reached one of the audiences most likely to run out of data each month: students (especially women) aged 18-24. This group is most likely to be out late, in clubs and bars, and then needing to find their way home (often via the local transport network vs taxis).

The approach was to reach the audience while they were out late, and use live data to provide a genuinely useful solution to get them home safe. Manchester is Europe’s largest University City with a vibrant nightlife, and it also has an extensive number of DOOH sites throughout the city and out towards the most popular student residential areas. So leveraging the DOOH technology – real time data, face recognition, brightening tech, and AR – allowed us to pull in more than 70,000 live data points giving these billboards the functionalities of smartphones.

From 10pm to 3am, we took over DOOH billboards in Manchester city center and, using the latest in out of home tech and real time data, created the first ever connected route home. Pulling in live mobile data to give digital billboards the same functionality of a phone. Displaying live trains, trams and bus departures, AR directions to transport hubs, and live map directions to LGBTQ+ safe spaces open late at night.

Project Home Safe created a route home, guiding from central Manchester clubs and bars, back to the student residential areas. Within the route, face recognition also triggered billboards to brighten dark spaces as lone people approached, and free charging points helped those whose phones were out of battery.

Manchester’s local council recognised our campaign as having a common cause and opened up the transport network to house it.

Our connected route home helped 500,000 safer journeys home and reached 2.1 million 18-24 year olds in Manchester.

‘Project Home Safe’ drove positive behavior change: 41% said they’d now have a conversation with their friends about getting home safely after a night out. With a third saying they would reference the campaign, and a quarter would now trust EE more to get them home.

We successfully drove perceptions of brand leadership; 40% said ‘EE takes action to make the world a better place.’ and anecdotal response was EE is “Modern, progressive, socially aware, supporting LGBTQ”.

The resulting brand impact for EE was significant, with the campaign driving 60% uplift in brand consideration; outperforming 75% of UK ads. With a significantly stronger campaign cut through in the 16-34 target demographic with 75% more likely to choose EE.