Shelter Uses Big Brother Hype To Highlight Homelessness
National homeless charity, Shelter, has harnessed the popularity of Channel 4’s Big Brother, with an ad campaign to raise awareness of the plight of the homeless.
The campaign, designed to emphasise exactly what eviction means in the real world, ran across Channel 4’s official Big Brother website and SubSites.co.uk to coincide with the end of the reality TV show.
The promotion was based on the fact that over 76,000 people in England were made homeless over the past year after being evicted from their houses and aimed to raise awareness of homelessness by highlighting the reality faced by many evictees.
Every visitor to the Big Brother website saw the ‘eviction night’ advert, which featured two women under the strapline: “It’s eviction night – you decide”. Users were given the chance to vote to stop either Lisa or Claire being evicted, with text-based votes being translated into donations for Shelter.
Through SubSites.co.uk, the agency responsible for the partnership, Shelter was able to monitor that over 120,000 unique users saw the advert and over 1,400 people visited the charity’s website as a result.
Commenting on the campaign, Adam Sampson, director of Shelter, said: “Big Brother has put the word eviction into everyday conversation. But the truth is that real evictions are grim, traumatic and very distressing for those who see their homes ripped away from them.”
The fourth series of Big Brother went out with a bang last Friday with a peak of 7.4 million viewers tuning into the finalé of the reality TV gameshow, making it the second most watched programme on Channel 4 so far this year (see 7.4 Million Watch Big Brother Go Out With A Bang).
Channel Four: 020 7396 4444 www.channel4.com
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