How Number 10 Downing Street video raised awareness for somewhereto_ project funded by Legacy Trust UK

This case study outlines the awareness campaign Livity developed for somewhereto_, a project funded by Legacy Trust UK, to 'unlock' dream spaces. The resulting campaign centred around the Number 10 film shot at Downing Street which was awarded Best Use of Video at this year's Dadi Awards.

Somewhereto_ was set up to create a lasting cultural and sporting legacy from the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games by putting disused and empty spaces within communities to use, as well as help young people set up digital spaces such as blog columns, YouTube channels and Twitter feeds. To boost the charity's brand awareness, somewhereto_ tasked youth communications and marketing agency Livity with developing a campaign which would reach out to their target audience.Key ObjectivesThe charity wanted to create a campaign which would help raise awareness of its goals and show the ways in which the project can help young people.Somewhereto_ tasked Livity with developing a campaign which would primarily showcase the organisation’s aim of linking unoccupied or unused space with young people for social, sporting, creative and entrepreneurial activities.Somewhereto_ also wanted the campaign to contribute towards its secondary objective: to build a movement to change the way that space is viewed and used in local communities, and across sectors.It also wanted to convey that as a legacy project, somewhereto_ is working towards becoming a fully sustainable model by the end of 2013.StrategyLivity developed the ‘dream spaces’ initiative, which encouraged the 'unlocking' of some of the UK’s most high-profile and well-known locations as venues for young people to perform. While developing this campaign the agency asked young people what space they would most like to 'take over' and perform in.The Prime Minister’s residence came out on top and thus the planning for a film to be shot at Number 10 got underway. Livity chairman Sam Conniff took the opportunity to tell one of the Prime Minister’s advisors about somewhereto_ and in less than a week the campaign film was being shot at Number 10.Production company Somethin' Else was brought on board and the campaign film was filmed against a narrative written and delivered by young people, the success of which saw it become the centre piece of the campaign series.Livity’s strategy was based on producing engaging content that would resonate with the target audience, which meant avoiding any strong 'sales' messages. Prior to filming at Number 10, the production team identified activities around which there was clearly a demand for space.With the aim of seeding Number 10 collateral across websites, newsletters, social communities and other channels, the team worked on building relationships with bloggers and influencers from these activities.ResultsThe free running community was particularly instrumental in helping to boost engagement figures, as somewhereto_ partnered with Urban Freeflow – a free running community with 1.15m registered site users and 114,019 Facebook members – on the filming and promotion.It was also boosted by the publicity following a showing of the film before the Prime Minister’s flagship speech at the Conservative Party Conference.To date the film has received over 53,000 hits on the somewhereto_ YouTube channel and had over 90,000 hits on the Urban Freeflow Channel before it was taken down in December 2011.Between October 5 (date of film launch) and October 25, the reach figures for somewhereto_ were as follows:

• 80,428 video views
• 21,705,793 PR and offline (including five national and four regional newspapers, one national and four regional broadcast, 35 consumer, 10 trade and one international piece)
• 16,293 Facebook impressions
• 255 Tumblr page views

In addition, during the same period somewhereto_ noted web traffic had increased by 56 per cent, with an uplift of 20 per cent in people directly engaging with the project through the site (for example requests for space, space donation, and newsletter sign-ups).Total investment in the campaign was £31,455.06, achieving overall reach, during the previously mentioned timeframe, of 693 people for every £1 spent.