Someone in Cape Town was the true story of an addict entering a free City of Cape Town rehab programme. Told entirely through social media posts and recreated using actors to protect the identities of everyone involved.

The story unfolded through a series of, at times, painfully honest Facebook posts; as though one was following a close friend sharing their personal journey.

Our very human story prompted people to reach out for help. We knew that people were seeking advice at a time when they most needed it, so we responded quickly and delicately. People commented on the Facebook page and opened up to our community managers in private messages.

Our character reached out to the audience on Facebook using video blogs and image posts. So, they could live through the day-to-day reality of the recovery process with him. Starting with the call to the helpline and the first hard days, to the faint glimmers of hope and finally leaving the first stage of the programme clean and hopeful for the future. Every post also wove in an explanation of the campaign and communicated the City’s drug helpline.

To explain our character’s decline into drug addiction, we populated his timeline with posts and milestones going back 4 years before the start day of the campaign.

Someone in Cape Town drove awareness by reachin an average of 409,142 people per month (defined as 28 days). Over the campaign period, this totalled to almost 6 million content impressions, 1,1 million of which was organic. PR Media impressions made up an additional 3.7 million impressions

The campaign also drove engagement around the content, landing the campaign message and illustrating how deeply it resonated with the audience. An average of 64,874 residents engaged with the campaign per month, an Facebook engagement rate of 15.86%. Over this campaign this resulted in a total 539,339 engagements.

The campaign educated residents about the recovery process and the City’s free helpline, evidenced by 204,988 video views (YouTube: 137,486, Facebook: 67,502). Most importantly, it led to a 269.3% increase in the number of calls compared to a non-campaign period. Despite the sensitive topic, the campaign maintained a negative sentiment rate of <1%