St Vincent De Paul Society launches new Winter fundraising campaign via Marlin Communications

If you were faced with the choice of staying in an abusive home, or sleeping on the street, which would you choose? This is the central question being posed by the St Vincent de Paul Society and its new winter campaign created by its new agency Marlin Communications.

Too many Australians are facing homelessness as a result of poverty, domestic violence and other factors. Vinnies aims to raise $6 million dollars to help provide housing assistance, everyday essentials like food and clothing, case management and ongoing support to build a brighter future for people in desperate need this winter.

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2018 marks a new phase for Vinnies. After a competitive pitch, Marlin was given responsibility for a series of new national fundraising appeals.

The Vinnies Winter Appeal is the first campaign to build on a new strategic approach – one that refuses to paint beneficiaries as victims, but shows the core difficulty being faced by so many vulnerable children, women and men in Australia – they simply don’t feel like they have another option.

As Jenny, the focus of the Winter Appeal asks, “where do you go when there’s nowhere to go?”

Marlin Communications has created an integrated campaign which presents the dramatic reality of life faced on the brink of poverty. Jenny has to choose whether she and her family should stay home, where she is abused by her husband, or risk danger and hunger on the street where more impossible choices await them.

Do you choose food over medicine? Do you pay bills instead of buying school shoes?

These are the questions that poverty raises in the lives of hundreds of thousands of Australians each year.

Marlin’s TVC and online film brings the viewer face to face with the emotional reality that Jenny faces because of poverty. The direct mail campaign helps the donor go deeper into her story and puts the focus on them – asking them directly ‘What would you do?’

By asking the donor to answer these impossible questions for themselves, Vinnies is helping all Australians empathise with the lived reality of homelessness and poverty which are so often invisible.

Documentary photographer and filmmaker David Maurice Smith filmed and shot the campaign through Flint Sydney.

Says Catherine Braybon, national marketing, Vinnies: “Women like Jenny aren’t victims, they are truly resilient people facing impossible choices.”  

Client: St Vincent De Paul Society

Production company: Flint Sydney