The background
SoloHaus is the brainchild of our client, Hill Group. To celebrate their 20th birthday they created Foundation 200, a £15million initiative to design and create 200 homes for the homeless. Known as SoloHaus, the homes are specially designed, furnished and fully equipped for a single person to move straight into. Each modular home provides independent space and a clean, safe and comfortable environment for residents to make the transition to more permanent accommodation. Built to Future Homes Standards and exceeding building energy efficiency with a design life of 60 years, the homes have energy costs of £5 a week.
The mission
Working with Hill Group and Haringey Council, Oracle was tasked to create as much media noise as possible at the handover of 32 modular pods which will soon become homes for people who are moving from a life of sleeping rough in the borough. Half of these homes were gifted by Hill to Haringey, at a time when safe housing is a common narrative as tackling homelessness remains a priority after the pandemic.
What we did
Armed with a positive news story, recent government stats on homelessness and a whole heap of enthusiasm we started reaching out to the national press to invite them to come and meet the team that had put this scheme together. And with the knowledge that we had at least one person attending who had had a very disadvantaged background, having been in prison twice and was now on the straight and narrow and had turned his life around with the help of Haringey Council.
On the day
We woke early as we were needed in Haringey by 8 in the morning. And it was one of those mornings that makes you pleased to be alive as the sunrise broke over the north downs on our way to London. Journalists were also keen to get there early, to meet the team and get a scoop from the spokespeople and we didn’t stop from 8 am until 1 pm when our work was done and we could have a well-deserved coffee and a pastry – before the site team appeared and devoured the leftovers!
Success
With The BBC, Metro, The Sunday Times and Time Out turning up to be a part of the event, we knew we had very happy clients. The Evening Standard had had an exclusive early interview with Hill and My London came to create a video the following week, which meant we had London well and truly covered.
Oracle secured 27 different pieces of coverage from major national print pieces and online stories to TV coverage and a lot of social media noise.
Social Stats so far from the 21 pieces of online coverage: