Homeless World Cup: Changing Lives Through Football 2019
500 players from nearly 50 countries took part in a week-long festival of football and much more at the 17th Homeless World Cup in Cardiff. We worked alongside actor and activist Michael Sheen to design and deliver an award-winning multi-channel strategic communications campaign helping transform the lives of those with lived experience of homelessness and social exclusion.
Objectives
- Put the spotlight on issues of homelessness, telling powerful human stories to show how sport can bring people together, create opportunities and change lives.
- Work with organisers to help create a world-class football experience for players, volunteers, staff and spectators.
- Work with the sector to help have a long-term positive impact on the use of sport in tackling homelessness in Wales.
- Raise the profile of Street Football Wales to help secure a sustainable future for the organisation.
- Build a communications framework for future Homeless World Cups.
- Achieve national and international coverage.
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Content from the Campaign
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More than 500 players representing nearly 50 countries travelled to Cardiff to play in the week-long festival of football from Saturday July 27th – Saturday August 3rd. Over one million people worldwide have had their lives positively impacted by the tournament and its programmes since the first tournament in Graz, Austria in 2003. We wanted to help make Cardiff’s tournament the best ever. Our team:
- Created the Homeless World Cup Cardiff 2019 brand, which made use of Wales’ dragon symbology. The brand was used in all aspects of the HWC campaign, in dozens of different iterations through OOH ads around Cardiff and around the festival site. The branding work has since been used to inspire designs for the upcoming Homeless World Cup-inspired Netflix film The Beautiful Game.
- Secured media coverage achieved worldwide across hundreds of print/broadcast/digital outlets, including The Guardian, The Sunday Times, Daily Mirror, GQ and major broadcasters such as BBC, Channel 4, ITV, Reuters and Sky Sports. Key shows included BBC Breakfast, BBC Radio 5Live, Radio 1 Newsbeat, Radio 2 Ken Bruce Show, Channel 4 news, BBC World Service, Sky Sports News.
- Scripted and shot films starring Michael Sheen which scored thousands of views and engagements, were praised by the sector for their framing on homelessness and shown on The Graham Norton Show, Soccer AM and Channel 5 News.
- Saw social media impressions exceed 8m and 11k new social media followers were gained.
- Co-organised a music and debate line-up, featuring the likes of comedian Sara Pascoe, a live recording of the Guilty Feminist Podcast with Deborah Frances-White and a retelling of the BBC Wales podcast Shreds, about the murder of Lynette White in the 1980s in Butetown, Cardiff. It was the first time in Homeless World Cup history that the tournament had hosted a music and debate line up which addressed the issues surrounding homelessness alongside the football.
