On June 14 2017 unsafe cladding in Grenfell Tower caught fire. The building burned for 60 hours before the fire was extinguished and 72 people lost their lives.

In the aftermath, Justice4Grenfell was established by community members to honour their memories and seek justice for those that died.

But three years later, no one had been held responsible and court proceedings and inquests were bogged down in technicalities of accountability. The groundswell of grief, mourning and outrage in the news media had been replaced by a conversation around building materials and practices (specifically around the cladding used in the construction of the building).

The humanity behind the disaster had fallen off the news agenda. To keep up the pressure for justice, we needed to get the human story back in the news. And as Grenfell is a grassroots community organisation, do it all with zero budget.

The brief was clear – make the people who died at Grenfell news again.

So we asked UK newspapers to give up one column inch to do just that. In this space we created a powerful symbol – their names in newsprint in the shape of the Grenfell Tower.

The only messaging apart from the names was “On June 14th 2017 these 72 people died. Their names should still be news”.

The aim was to humanise the victims of the Grenfell disaster to keep up pressure to get justice for those who died, and their families and loved ones.

To get the names of the victims into the news, we needed to find a new way of working with editorial. Usually there has to be a clear delineation between editorial and other content. But for this execution leading newspapers around the UK broke their own rules and matched our tower to their typefaces and editorial style.

Leading newspapers donated space for our typographic tower and adapted it to their own editorial style. These ran around the 3rd anniversary of Grenfell in The Sun, The Times, and The Daily Mail.

This small act became something far more powerful. The simplicity of this symbol meant that it could start in news, and exist in social media and OOH–with zero media budget.

Humanising the Grenfell story has never been more important. We reminded people that Grenfell isn’t just about cladding and fire regulations – it’s about getting justice for those who died.

In newspapers the memorial reached 2.67M readership.

Online, the memorial had over 100 million media impressions.

Shared by Liam Payne, leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn, model and activist Adwoa Aboah, among others.

The campaign received over 11.5k Tweets and retweets.

It generated over £500,000 in earned media in 24 hours.

It is now featured in the Museum of London’s permanent collection to make sure no one ever forgets that their names should still be news.

With zero budget, we got their names back on the media agenda and gave Justice4Grenfell a clear, simple, and powerful message that could be shared with passionate advocates all across the UK and the world.