iHobo is a game that takes place in real-time over 3 days. You are given a homeless man to live on your phone for 72 hours. In that time you have to be there to provide him with every need, whether it be food, money or a sleeping bag. If you're not there for him then he can turn to drugs, or even die. Annoyingly, I didn't request push notifications on this, so when my homeless man wanted something I wasn't there for him. Basically, when I checked up on him by the morning he had been mugged for his sleeping bag, didn't have any money for a hostel and had taken drugs to stop the cold. Clearly I'm not cut out for this malarkey.
The app was created by Publicis London to raise awareness of Depaul UK, a charity devoted to youth homelessness, with the aim of trying to get more young people involved in the issue. I found it to be effective in the way that it instills a sense of guilt in you when you come back to find out what's been happening with your hobo after leaving him for the night - putting the issue into an almost entertaining setting helps the user to understand what can happen when homeless, and hopefully will encourage others to think twice when they pass a real homeless person on the street.
South African agency TBWAHuntLascaris has created a really clever piece of ambient advertising to draw attention to human trafficking in South Africa. Created on behalf of the Southern African Counter-Trafficking Assistance Programme, it is aimed at potential victims of trafficking.
“We realised that human trafficking relies on the fact that potential victims will be uninformed," say the creatives, Miguel Nunes and Charles Pantland. "So we needed to talk to the community directly, the way human traffickers do. Like the recruiters, we targeted children near schools or just walking the streets of poverty stricken townships and dense urban slums where unemployment and forced prostitution are common. And like the criminals, we employed an element of deception: we created tunnels with false walls which precisely matched the walls behind them, so that when people walked through, they disappeared – leaving onlookers wondering what had happened to them. By forcing people to imagine the unimaginable, the potential victims actually became the message." (copied from the Creative Review blog post)
Having taken part in projects where we had to create ambient advertising, I know how hard it can be to come up with an effective idea which still makes people look at it and say ‘why didn’t I think of that?’ This campaign not only targets the appropriate audience but manages to blend into the surroundings though it’s simple design effectively.
Agency: TBWAHuntLascaris
Art director: Miguel Nunes
Copywriter: Charles Pantland
Creative director: Vanessa Gibson
Executive creative director: Damon Stapleton
Photographer: Des Ellis
Director: Rob Wilson
