Following on from the successful #lovehome campaign for MOBIE in May 2019, July saw us support George Clarke and his Amazing Productions team with the launch of a new national campaign calling for more, and better, council housing to be built across the UK.

On 31 July 2019, exactly 100 years since the first council estates were created following the Addison Act, making ‘homes fit for heroes’ after the First World War, George launched a petition calling on the Government for 100,000 new council houses to be built every year for the next 30 years.

The first episode of George Clarke’s Council House Scandal aired that same night on Channel 4, and investigated the shortage of good quality council housing across the country, which has left more than a million people on council housing waiting lists.

Working closely with George and his team, we developed a dedicated brand and logo for the campaign, and launched this via a targeted microsite which went live on the anniversary date of 31st July, with the key goal of driving visitors to sign the change.org petition.

We wanted to create a visually engaging site that quickly and effectively communicated the campaign’s aims to visitors, particularly those directed to the site by a caption at the end of the programme.

To support the messaging of the campaign we themed the site around user generated contributions. We developed an interactive polling system to pose questions relating to the campaign’s themes, with live score updates; and a submissions form for interested visitors to send comments, photos and videos – which were then hosted in a content grid.

• During the first hour following transmission of the programme, over 9,000 people visited the site, with a peak of 3,000 simultaneous users.
• Traffic continued throughout August with over 35,000 visitors to the site during that month.

At the time of writing, the Council House Scandal petition has just under 270,000 signatories and has helped George make great strides in getting his message across to the Government.