Journalists want ‘exclusives’, so we only approached them one at a time. The third journalist committed immediately. Their editor agreed to run the story in The Good Weekend magazine, which appears in Australia’s most well respected Saturday newspapers, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, which are read by over 1.7 million Australians. We spent less than $5 per pack – a grand total of under $15 – but gained $200,000 in free media (the equivalent of 3 full page ads). In other words, for every single dollar invested, we received over $13,333 in media exposure and reached over 110,000 people.

Since 1964 the Wayside Chapel (WC) has cared for Sydney’s homeless, but 2008 was going to be their toughest winter yet, with higher interest rates and food and fuel prices increasing the numbers of homeless and cutting sharply into donations. The WC needed money urgently, to care for this spike in homeless people. To increase donations, they needed to raise public awareness - without any budget for advertising. We decided to focus on gaining media exposure.

Challenge high-profile journalists to live as homeless people in Sydney. We hand delivered selected journalists an ‘Invisibility Suit’, which at first glance looked like the outfit of a superhero. On opening it, they discovered the truth: The ‘suit’ was actually the clothing of a homeless person. We invited them to wear the outfit on the streets for 24 hours, and then report on their experience.

This idea was relevant because we got a journalist to tell the story of a homeless person in Sydney. This added huge credibility to our cause. The strength of the creative was that we got a huge amount of exposure with virtually no money at all.