One cold and rainy morning in December, DDB Canada placed three life-sized, human-looking sculptures in high-traffic areas in downtown Vancouver. Each was placed in familiar poses—panhandling outside a SkyTrain station, pushing a shopping cart and lying in a sleeping bag on the sidewalk. Signs urged people to “Help get someone off the streets,” and slips of paper directed passers-by to the fictional Facebook profiles of “Steve,” “Gordon,” and “Jody.”
It was an awareness campaign with a twist and the figures represented people who had made it off the streets through the help of First United Church.
Rev. Ric Matthews said it wasn’t about raising funds for the Church, rather they wanted to help people think differently about homelessness.
“The real power wasn’t on the day with people stopping and looking. The real power was pointing out that people didn’t stop and look,” said Matthews. “It made the point very powerfully for us that we see homelessness as an issue, but we don’t see the person in the issue.”
Cosmo Campbell, creative director at DDB, said it was important to focus on the positive effects of the church’s work.
“Often with issues like this, it’s always pulling on the heart strings and looking at things from the negative,” Campbell said. “We felt that First United have done so much incredible work and that incredible work doesn’t tend to get recognized.”
People stopped and got out their cheque books that day, but more importantly, Campbell said, it generated a lot of media and viral interest that continues to take on a life of its own after the event.
