Vinnie’s is Australia’s biggest chain of charity thrift stores. With 50% of its income going directly to the poor. Problem was, their sales were dramatically slipping, like every other ‘fashion’ and ‘bricks & mortar’ business in Australia. Vinnie’s needed an idea that would insulate them from the problems being encountered by the retail sector but allow them to remain in bricks and mortar dwellings.

Signed Finds Sport' leveraged Aussie sport fanaticism in order to increase foot traffic into Vinnie's stores. We got hundreds of sport stars to sign their shirts and Vinnies hid those special garments in their network of over 600 stores.

We then used a simple Facebook page to seed clues and help the fans find the signed shirts. Effectively driving a sport-loving, nation of autograph hunters IN STORE. Where they not only looked for the signed shirts, but found other cool stuff to buy in the process.

Go to any live sports game in Australia – AFL, tennis, soccer, rugby, cricket - and you’ll see lines of kids and their parents waiting pen in hand for autographs. People are nuts about getting signed sport merchandise.

Distributing these highly prized clothing items across the network of Vinnie's stores to act as lures for new generations that had forgotten about the brand was both a fresh and highly relevant approach to their business problem of dwindling foot traffic and consequently sales.

In a retail downturn where the average growth for retailers was 2.5%, Vinnie's sales rose over 9%.

In addition, they’d introduced a new audience to their stores.

And a sports mad nations passion was directed towards something a little different, helping those in need.