GPS-positioning using smart phones is one of the hottest trends these days. In January, Facebook Places was launched in Sweden, and Gowalla had been around for a few months. We wanted to take advantage of this trend in order to make people aware of the fact that there are 900 homeless people, including 200 children, in Malmo.With the help of two technically savvy consultants, we hijacked Facebook Places and Gowalla and added 900 spots all over Malmo. When you wanted to check in, the homeless people appeared in your list.

The objective of the campaign was to make people notice the homeless in Malmo.By targeting early adopters, who use the latest technology to check into places with the help of applications such as Gowalla and Facebook Places, we wanted to place the homeless in the virtual city.The strategy was to position these 900 homeless people, where you wouldn’t expect to find them, and make it possible for the users of Gowalla and Facebook Places to actually check into these spots.

With $0 media budget we achieved media impact worth an estimated $365,000 and reached 1,100,000 people.

Aluma is always looking for creative and innovative ways to promote their projects. Using the latest technology to raise the awareness of the situation for the homeless people in Malmo seemed very relevant in this case.And to our knowledge, this has never been done in the past, which adds to the creativity and the originality of the solution.