How the advertising industry can help the Refugee Crisis: Q&A with Josie Naughton

Help Refugees is in Cannes to show the film ‘The Journey’ in partnership with Clear Channel. It shows the journey that people are still going on – the journey of two unaccompanied children. No one is really happening about it anymore, but we want to use it to spread awareness and the message of Choose Love and to let people know about our work and to see if people can help because the need is really great.

And so how do you think the advertising industry can help you in your mission?

The advertising industry can help us by helping us spread our message and that doesn't have to be images of the horrors of what is going on, it can be of positive and empowering images and messages. What Clear Channel has done with us is to give us space for free which as been really incredible. We’re up on that big screen which is something as a charity that we could never do ourselves. We don’t even know what the opportunities might be. This is a place full of creative ideas, full of creative people who might be able to help us have more impact.

And what sort of response have to had from the industry so far?

Everyone has been so nice, inspired and people really want to do something to help. They sometimes don’t really think that they can do anything and that by working in advertising they can’t have any impact on the refugee crisis, but they can. It’s exciting for people.

Tell me how you do help refugees?

We’re going to be three years old soon. We started by trying to raise £1,000 and a van load of stuff to take to Calais but we ended up raising £56,000 in the first week and so we created an Amazon wishlist of items like shoes and blankets and tents. We started to receive 7,000 packages every single day, which was completely overwhelming. We had to organise volunteers to help pack and sort, and then we realised that we didn’t know who we were going to give this to, so we went to Calais to find the organisation that we would hand it all over to. What we found was that there was no organisation taking care of these people. There were babies with no nappies, sleeping outside without even a tent, families without shoes or food or access to water. I never expected to see anything like that in my whole life, so we ended up renting a warehouse, starting a volunteer programme and a distribution system and we ended up becoming account management to a refugee camp of 12,000 people but at the same time we found that these gaps were happening all through out the world. There are local and incredible organisations who are doing this incredible, life-saving work who we support. We have almost 80 incredible partners throughout Europe and the Middle-East on the front line who are helping people to distribute food, making sure people are warm and safe and have access to medical care. This is the crisis of our times and everyone has a responsibility to do something to help those less fortunate.

How do you feel this crisis is currently being reported and awareness is being generated?

It’s not really being reported any more and it is still going on and emergencies happening every day and there are more people displaced than ever before and it’s hard to get it on the new agenda and part of the reason for that is that people don’t feel that there is much that people can do to help, but we want to tell people that there are lots of things that you can do to help and they can find out more about that on our website.

So why does this matter to advertisers?

Because this is about human beings and so much that Help Refugees has done is to raise awareness from crowdfunding which has been through the use of social media and through people being kind to us, like Clear Channel, in getting our message out there. The advertising industry has the reach to really galvanise people and get them to do want to something. It can be a really exciting thing to use your skills for good.

The merchandising has become synonymous with Help Refugees – where did that come from?

When we started we wanted to do a gig and we were thinking that we should sell a T shirt. So we wondered what the T shirt should say and we were really lucky that Catherine Hamnett, who is famous for designing the Choose Life T shirts that George Michael used to wear, said she would come on board. We were thinking about what our message would be and we realised that people talk about all of the politics when actually this could be your mother or your child, so we decided on ‘Choose Love’. And making it a cool brand that doesn’t seen inaccessible has been huge for us and so the T shirts have become hugely popular – Oprah Winfrey wore on which was amazing. People have really responded to it and it’s all about a way of life. We’ve opened an online story where you can have a shopping experience where you can buy items that refugees need and we’ll make sure they are distributed to them, that ranges from anything; from a school bag to a blanket.

Got some spare time this weekend? Here's our guide to the best things happening across the UK! https://t.co/6wxs6Lb2ew pic.twitter.com/aeO9c9Nilm

— The Pool (@thepooluk) June 29, 2018

How many T shirts have you now sold?

We have sold 40,000 T shirts and we have helped 722,000 people and raised £12.5m and it’s been hugely successful. We had a physical version of the online store as well at Christmas and this is the power of advertising where we managed to get a lot of social partners to share information about the shop which created a social reach of 400 million and that store raised nearly £1m at Christmas. We’re doing pretty good.

Which platforms are you using to reach your audience?

We have our own accounts on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook and a big part of that is other people’s accounts using viral video channels, our campaign with Clear Channel has been really important to us and using influencers, celebrities – we put ourselves anywhere.

How many are employed now?

There are seven people managing this in London and then two people managing our accounts and then we have about 20 long-term volunteers in the field and through our partner organisations that we fund there will be more volunteers through those. The net is pretty vast. Our annual turn over for the two-years, each years we have raised and spent £5m but our core costs have only been 6% as we want as much of the money to go on the ground as possible and be as effective as possible.

What were your expectations two years ago when you started again as I bet it wasn’t this?

No, it was £1,000 and a van full of stuff. So it’s been pretty crazy.

What do you think this says about people in general?

It shows that people can do anything. We always say that this is a movement rather than a charity. We’ve had 25,000 volunteers, we are a predominantly crowd-funded organisation, there is no one person responsible for this, it is the will of people in general. People put all their different skills forward, be it that they know how to build a shelter or they know how to make a really great ad campaign.

What’s next?

Just to keep doing what we’re doing I think. Unfortunately this doesn’t feel like it’s a crisis that is going anywhere and we want to be able to continue to fill those gaps, give people dignity and try to change the gaps one step at a time.

Find out how to help or get involved with the refugee movement through the official website.