UNFAIR CITY was born out of a need to find new ways of highlighting Dublin’s homelessness crisis and the growing inequality in our city. Homelessness has been getting steadily worse every year and the public are becoming desensitised to stories about it. It has become easy for people to ignore it and difficult for the media to cover it. For this reason Dublin Simon deliberately used one of the most contentious areas of technology, Artificial Intelligence, to create a groundbreaking film to act as a trojan horse to get the media and public to engage with the homelessness crisis again.

The film had an immediate positive impact for Dublin Simon. For a local charity with no media spend, it reached far beyond our intended Dublin audience – with 25.4 million impressions*, in a city with a population of just 1.2 million.
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Within hours of launch it featured on RTÉ (the national broadcaster), The Irish Independent (the highest circulation newspaper in the country) and Newstalk (the largest independent national radio station), as well as dozens of other national and international publishers, radio stations, newspapers and blogs.
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However, more importantly, that reach was matched with donations, with an 259% increase during the month of the campaign – 55% of whom were new donors aged 18-34, helping with our goal of expanding the declining donor base**.
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Finally, much of the editorial comment centred on the enormous potential of AI for the charity sector as a tool to allow vulnerable or marginalised people to tell their stories. One of the difficulties of telling stories of homelessness is that it can be very exposing for Dublin Simon’s service users. Reliving difficult moments in their lives in front of cameras and crew can be traumatic. The great benefit of using AI in this instance is that it allowed Justin to tell his story, on his own terms, in a way that was still visually engaging and evocative. In this sense the use of AI helped to maintain the dignity and humanity of his story.
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*Source: Dublin Simon Internal.
**Source: Coveragebook and Similarweb Reports, 4/4/23.

SPOT OF THE WEEK - Lürzer's Archive
GOLD - Effies Awards 2023 - Public Service and Government
FINALIST - The Webby Awards 2024 - AI, Metaverse & Virtual - AI Apps and Experiences - Public Service & Activism
SILVER - The Lovie Awards 2023 - Web3 & XR Public Service and Activism
PEOPLE'S CHOICE - The Lovie Awards 2023 - Web3 & XR Public Service and Activism
BRONZE - ICAD 2023 - Creative Innovation
BRONZE - ICAD 2023 - Earned Media
BRONZE - ICAD 2023 - Creative for Change
SILVER - Shark Awards 2023 - Advertising Film: Direct Response
BRONZE - Shark Awards 2023 - Advertising Film: Charities and Trusts
SHORTLIST - Shark Awards 2023 - Digital: Innovative Use of Tech
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Executive Creative Director: Shane O’Brien
Creative Director/Concept: Robert Boyle
Strategy Director/Concept: Adriano Eliezer
Art Director/Concept: Vinicius Bustamante
Copywriter: Donal Gaughran
Creative Director/copywriter: Eoin Conlon
Head of Innovation: Ed Leamy
Head of Production: Jessica Derby
Directed by Diogo Kalil for Lobo.cx

When you are homeless that is not all you are. Yet, that is how people are defined and understood and spoken about. The truth is, reducing their humanity to this one word compounded the brutal nature of the life they were living. It further lessened them, diminished them. So, for the first time, Dublin Simon made a campaign that speaks directly to homeless people, rather than about them. It is both an apology and a hymn to their humanity and the richness of their lives. They deserve nothing less.
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SILVER - ICAD 2022 - Web film up to 60 seconds
SILVER - ICAD 2022 - VOD / VOL single
BRONZE - Shark Awards 2022 - Best Direction
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Executive Creative Director - Shane O’Brien
Copywriter - Des Kavanagh
Art Director - Rob Murray
Agency Producer - Georgia Stevenson
Directed by Dermot Malone for Banjoman Films.