Our mission was to show the possibilities that digital screens have to offer. Furthermore, Clear Channel is an active player in the cities where they are present through developing their screens in many different ways.

Our starting point was the great amount of homeless people that are increasing in Sweden every year. This year, the question was more relevant than ever before. We chose to take advantage of the fact that winter was approaching, and that there are more and more vulnerable people in need of extra help. The City of Stockholm has also given directives that more shelters need to open up when temperatures reach -7 degrees. The problem was that few found their way to the shelters. Therefore, we wanted to showcase the digital possibilities through creating something that truly contributes to social benefit.

We created a program using the coordinates provided by Clear Channels out-of-home units to map out a route to each location using Google Distance Matrix API. After cleaning up and formatting the data provided by the API we created a precomputed table that we could easily access without having to rely on third party services, ensuring stability even in a scenario of the internet going out. This table contained the unique screen ID, coordinates and the distance to every shelter from that coordinate.

We made use of a weather API from SMHI to fetch local temperature/condition updates. We limited the API update frequency to sync up with the institute to avoid unnecessarily straining their systems, saving the temperature in local storage until a new request was made.

Assets and scripts were hosted on Amazon Web Services in a single page, versions of the screens were selected in real

To ensure that we were going to solve an actual problem, we teamed up with organizations like Stockholms Stadsmission (a Swedish charity tackling homelessness through social care, work integration and education) and Ny Gemenskap (a non-profit organization offering food and shelter to homeless) early on to form the idea to meet real challenges.

We collected data from those charity organizations and paired it with data sourced from open APIs such as weather, GPS coordinates and time.

These partners gave us access to insights and data which helped us further understand the problem. During the winter, more organizations showed interest in contributing, and we were able to connect them to the emergency system, displaying their information in real-time.

Depending on day, time, location and temperature, the digital screens displayed different messages. We used digital out of home displays in areas with a high concentration of homeless people.

The emergency system was running throughout the winter period of 2018-19 on 53 digital out of home displays around Stockholm, Sweden.

We used digital out of home displays in areas with a high concentration of homeless people. The screens directed homeless people towards emergency shelters during cold temperatures, and where they could find a hot meal and other useful real-time information.

The number of screens changed depending on the temperature in the city and was raised when the temperatures dropped.

The initiative has created attention for an important matter, but more importantly, the ones who have been in need of warmth and care the most, have received it. Many of the related organizations have witnessed new faces that have appeared. From all over Sweden, people joined the conversation on social media and engaged. And they took to action; donating necessities or signing up to be a volunteer.

78% have become more positive towards Clear Channel after having seen the campaign, with a benchmark of 30%. Furthermore 4 out of 10 became interested in buying a product or service from the sender, which is higher than the benchmark of 2,5.

Communication wise, the project has reached over 78 million people in earned organic media, thanks to 120+ Swedish and international news articles. A month after the project started, more cities within Clear Channels network now wants to use the emergency.