Mobile Loaves & Fishes (MLF), an Austin, TX-based nonprofit group, took a bold step to bring the blight of the city’s homeless front and center to its motorists. Danny Silver, who’s been living in a tent in North Austin with his wife, Maggie, a wheelchair-bound stroke victim, spent two days living beneath a billboard situated alongside Interstate 35. The billboard resembled a cardboard, handwritten sign commonly associated with a homeless person’s pleas for help, and succinctly stated, "I am Danny, I am Homeless, I AM HERE,” and provided a number to which motorists could text donations to MLF.
T3 (Austin), which does pro bono work for MLF, handled the project’s creative development. According to Ben Gaddis, the company’s director of mobile and emerging technology, project decisionmakers decided it would be the best way to grab attention. The billboard served as a catalyst for a multimedia campaign that includes an interactive website, as well as traditional-media components.
“Too often, homelessness becomes an invisible problem,” he said. “You don’t think about it unless you’re stopped on the street by someone living on the street. After we worked through potential legal issues, we decided this was the best way to bring the plight of the homeless front and center.”
T3 contracted with Reagan Outdoor Advertising’s Austin office, which donated billboard space. To allay safety concerns, Reagan retrofitted the board with a 6-ft.-deep patio to allow moving space, and T3 provided safety harnesses.
Ultimately, the billboard performed a much greater function than raising awareness about the homeless. Donations raised enough money to allow Danny and Maggie to move into a gently used mobile home – the 49th person MLF has helped gain housing.
CNN, USA Today and other major media outlets picked up the story and published them on their website. Danny’s daughter, Brittany, who hadn’t seen her father in 10 years, read the story and immediately contacted MLF. MLF and T3 arranged a reunion.
“There wasn’t a dry eye in the house,” Gaddis said.
Signage informs, signage directs — and, when people with goodwill band together and embrace signs reach, it connects.