15% of dry-cleaning is never claimed. In London alone that equates to almost 3 million items of clothing that simply collect dust in a stock room every single year. Our idea was the simple act of re-purposing these clothes for a good cause, by giving them to people to whom they really could mean a fresh start. A suit is a tangible tool that could mean the difference between a new job and no job.

We partnered AOA with dry-cleaners across London to create ‘the dry/clean initiative’. It provides former addicts, who are dry from alcohol and clean from drugs, with formal attire that could change their lives; the dry-cleaners provide unclaimed suits, recovering addicts use them for job interviews, something as simple as a suit can turn someone’s life around.

Having developed a narrative that would resonate with DCs, we had to execute it in a way that would reach them, despite having zero-budget. Though we would rely slightly on a social/PR effort to spread our message, we knew our story was compelling enough to make the most of limited resources.

‘Debbie’s Story’ (the film at the heart of our campaign) allowed us to seed our call to action across multiple mainstream news outlets, encouraging the public to share TDCI with their local DC.

Unsuitable clothing donations were re-purposed to create DM, which we sent to CEOs of nationwide DC chains.

AOA and their partners also tweeted and posted and we also created a B2B radio marketing campaign, in which DCs recruited each other, creating a further PR spike and further donations of formal wear.

Like the formal wear, all time and media for the project was volunteered and donated.

The campaign is in its infancy. But in launch week alone, we gained the support of 34 London DCs, garnering overwhelming numbers of donations. With 15% of their average annual turnover of 80k pieces unclaimed each, that’s a total of 408,000 items for our cause. Around 2/3 of these are formal, meaning we already have an annual pledge of 269,000 items to give to determined former addicts.

This is an exciting achievement, but it’s just the beginning. Debbie (the recovering addict that stars in our film) refers to her suit as her lucky charm. But there are over 4million addicts in the UK. We’re currently in discussions with several national dry-cleaning chains, as well as dozens more independent drycleaners, to help expand our operation both within and outside of London.

Despite a total campaign budget of £0, we’ll ensure our initiative continues to create a real movement in the UK.